Europe After the Rain

by Alan Burns

  While the father had been uniformed – with medals, buttons, epaulettes, a ring on his forefinger, a tough old man – his son was of another type: he had a gloomy smile, a subdued expression, which marked a face not yet crushed, a moral agnosticism different from anything I had seen. Yet the only blood was the blood of the father; the son had to fight him with the hope of a wild animal, with a cold, bare silence which could not be beaten, with an obedience which accused. While he taught, the son was on his own: “In the occupied areas the population slowly but steadily decreases, while in the liberated territories it as inevitably expands.” He pointed to a map – a large space containing gold, enclosed by forts, squares of black. In moments of seriousness, in the tone of his voice and the words used, there was always the same line – a pathway to the dead. He was in pain, but would have no doctor: doctors were “dull and pointless”. The revolutionary troops sang songs together with clapping hands and dancing, and the whole point was something of love, with allusions to their life in the town. “My father objects to the dancing, though dancing is our only amusement. He has a conviction that nothing can be clean.”

  When he looked past his father towards me, the expected cold was felt – the air was as if it had passed over ice. He was young; he had seen the world, the blue line in the distance; his eyes bold, well shaped, deep blue; startling pieces of ice floated in the blue. Half the face looked straight over the sea; he was tall, not ugly, yet confined and bound, cut by the river itself. The father said his son would not stand the cold, and it was true. He cracked to pieces, was half destroyed – there appeared a break in the old shape; he faced me, taller and thinner. This deterioration was to be observed. Rouge was used, his cheeks painted to imitate youth, his origin lost as it stretched out, his neck the beak of a duck. In the shadow of his father he failed. He was no longer remarkable. The absence of concentration – it was the first time I had noticed it. I had never known a father who killed. He continued to teach the history of the party, and of his father’s role: “Full of courage he assumed power. He destroyed the organization and divided the party.” His father stood at the back of the crowded room. He nodded to his son, who went with him to the adjoining room; the son’s voice, higher-pitched than the older man’s, could be heard through the board partition. “I am tired and would like to go to bed. When the sun rose, I was so tired that I could not enjoy anything. The rush of water coming over showed itself; I would not make the colours so rich; twenty feet of water rushed over in a column.”

  The white beds and the delicate white curtains – no flowers, no books, no work but mental death. The faces were happy. The lack of hope brought calm. The windows were never opened. The rules, dress, system of life, were those of the army. Side by side with the doctor stalked the father with all the knowledge. I noticed the names – some familiar, some foreign – written over the beds. I was a man who had been sent to study documents, yet they did not accuse me of indifference. The punishments were the same as in the army. They were denied the little food, made to kneel, allowed to talk only in echoes. The father visited the dying, gave them water, touched their foreheads and noted them down in the records, which they did not see. The son remembered and spoke of his death, which he did not know of. He saw a shabby monument which marked the spot. The land belonged to the people. He told me his dream of his death. He was three men. The weather was cold. The three looked small on the battlefield. Straight under the steep rock, coloured brown and yellow, the untidy town, full of colour, was reflected in the water. The season was over, the boats no longer ran, the river fell straight over the cliff; there was no decline; you saw no rocks – they were hidden by water, which rushed with violence – it was not a fall like other falls; it was not what it was – it had been diverted to make electric light. “I did not realize it was my last chance of seeing lights – I saw nothing but small white wreaths for the dead; the trees had been cut down – there were no trees in the place, no gardens; the land not built upon was covered with rubbish. The last man missed his footing and fell. He was already fifty yards away; he threw his arms into the air – the fatal instinct; the body was not recovered, though it may have been. The life was over. Can anything be more logical?” I tried to understand the sequence of events. He was ill, but still seemed to want to know more, spoke with an odd pride, grinned with pleasure when I told him that, though I was a foreigner, I believed that sooner or later some form of victory must come. He let me see then that he knew something of the struggle that was going on. I would not soon forget the intelligent face. He had not spoken of his sister. I asked him to write her a note. He said he was incapable of writing; he could not remember her name; he could not write a single word. It was not writing but real work that was required of him. As soon as he was well, he would ask to be transferred to the fighting front.

  In his private room, the father gave me fried eggs and bread. He played the violin. He was drunk. We played cards, each trying to cheat – he distracted me with his talk. “I have seen the destruction of the best men. One wife would not allow her husband to be buried; she gave us the name and his body was sent by car, concealed under my coat, a hat over his face. We told her he had escaped by aeroplane – I remember the streaming from her eyes; he had died defeated, in the corridor, killed. How she suffered. And the lips of some agonized mother I will never know, her son among the missing. He had left that day, before lunch. No return. He had disappeared without reason. Yet I am not worried; I don’t feel.” I threw my cards down. “I must find the girl. I am not interested in anything else.” “First we must eat. You must stay – we’ll have a party.” He gave me his son’s room. Two wooden chairs and a table: the essentials. He pushed open the door without knocking, stood in his military greatcoat; his face had a hard, obstinate look that had not been there before. He sat down opposite me, offered me a cigarette and began a drunken monologue. “My teeth are bad, and so is the life I have to lead.” He fell asleep in the chair; I took the lit cigarette from between his fingers. As I had been told that I would not be able to buy any food on my journey, I stole from his cupboard the rest of the bread, some tea and a few eggs. Before I left I noticed with pleasure the trembling of his legs. We were both foreigners.

  Chapter 4

  I rejoined the regular troops. They talked of bandits and mass slaughter, but I knew they were deceiving themselves – it was the new human mind. I saw signs of recent battles; I noted them particularly.

  The sky was usually grey, yet I could see the road for miles; every object was distinct: piles of stones, gravel, a steamroller, axes in use, logs, small bridges. We drove along red roads, between trees sunk into soaking fields. We reached the forest, and from then on it was never out of sight, even from the suburbs of the town, house after house – people walking, carrying; bundled up human beings. It was cold; we lost the way; it rained when it should have been fine.

  My reckless driver handled his car – he put on the brakes to avoid a collision; I was frantic; the powerful car spun round twice before overturning; I sprang from the car. He remained calm. The car righted itself; he gave a contemptuous flap of his hand, indifferent to my shouted protest. The road was metalled; the earth had frozen; the forest was not far away; the land was derelict. “Now we have lost contact with our escort,” the driver said. “We don’t need an escort.” “Impossible. We cannot go on” – with fear in his eyes – “there are bandits; the roads are too dangerous.” “We are going on.” “I have other things to do – important duties – I cannot go any farther.” “You must go on – it is an order.” “No. Stay where you are.” I had no alternative. I depended on him – not least because I could not drive the car.

  “The road is not really so bad.” He did not reply. We were in the front seats of the car, by the side of the road, just within the forest. He did not say “this is the forest”; he did not speak – he had other things on his mind. He studied an instruction booklet, which seemed to relate to the revolver which he h
ad taken from its holster and laid across his knees. A farm to our left had, or had not, a patch of birch trees growing close to the walls of the farmhouse – I was not certain about it. A family was being taken from the house and loaded onto a lorry, together with their belongings. The driver noticed my concern. “Do you want to see them taken away? It’s only half a mile.” “What is there to see?” “Nothing. It’s just a place like this.” He said that to intrigue me, to interest me in something else. I replied: “Then there is no point in wasting time over it.” The map he showed me, on which was marked the place to which the people were to be taken, showed clearly that to have followed them would have taken me in the wrong direction, back towards the troops’ headquarters. I could see also that his map did not correspond with the map I had made – nor did it bear any relation to the map the girl had given me. “By the way,” I asked him, “will the family be loaded from one lorry onto another? Or will they stay on the same lorry?” “They change at a small town thirty miles away; I hear that they are going to be allowed to stay in that place. It is a pity there is no road to it – you ought to see it: it’s a beautiful town.” “I’m afraid there is not enough daylight left.” “You should see it. The fountains are famous.” “Wasn’t the town destroyed?” “No, the inhabitants were cleared out and it was preserved for hunting. The army was sent round it, not through it, so it did not suffer. It still contains rare specimens of wild animals.” He showed me a newspaper photograph of a young man in a light-grey uniform similar to his own, though his was darker. He laughed. “A boy. A bandit killed in a raid; he was thirteen years old.” I said that this was a surprise to me – I had not realized that these gangsters were so young. “Are there many left?” I asked.

  “Perhaps eight or ten. Far too many – they must be shot down.” I was winning his confidence. He talked seriously, with terrific enthusiasm. “They are a pest. Their stupidities and brutalities no longer trouble us, but they attack farms and kill the animals. They drink the blood and leave the carcasses.” “Blood?” “They get desperate and kill sheep. They had all been driven back across the frontier, until one of their old leaders escaped from prison and built them up again.” He showed me another photograph, of a naked man crawling between ranks of soldiers like a dog – a small, tough dog roaming the ruins. “We have a battalion competition,” he said. “There is a money prize for any man who can capture two bandits on the same day. This one was caught in a pit. A hole was dug, the top covered, mud and grass scattered over it. We left some food – he was starving and made a rush for it. The earth collapsed under him. It was cruel. Imagine the weight: the earth fell on top of him as he crashed down.” His face was sweating with excitement; I had a sudden glimpse of what it must have been like. “We pulled him out the next day – he was alive, but with badly broken limbs; we chased him, you can see, hemmed him in; after I managed to get a rope round his legs he couldn’t resist; once the noose was pulled tightly we dragged him in the desired direction. The others struggled to get their ropes round him – they leant on him with all their weight; even that was not the end of it.” “You seem to have enjoyed yourselves.” He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt. His upper arm was contained in a plaster cast; his finger went along the surface of the stuff, which cut his arm almost into equal parts. He wanted to talk freely. I knew that the way to get him to tell me what had become of the girl was to ask him about himself. He told me about his family, the war, and, in a gesture of friendship, he said that I must sign his autograph book. “You must start a fresh page.” “I am in a special category,” I remarked, as I wrote my name on a blank page at the back of the instruction booklet. As I wrote, I lifted the corner of the preceding page, to try to read the other names. He snatched the book away. “Tell me,” I asked in a friendly tone, “how were you taken into the army?” “When I got to the camp I was told what would happen if I didn’t join up – they told us again and again. Then the war ended and they said we were no longer required – that we could return home. I refused. They sent me away. I picked up some food from the floor and was sent to prison for stealing.” “When did you learn that you were wanted again?” “They never told me, but I knew it would happen, and I started off. The nearest railway station was two hundred miles away; I walked from one place to the other.” “How did you manage to live?” “I did some work, serving my country, then went on.” He was under twenty. He had an amused look on his face. “I was joking,” he said. “I was not taken – I went by myself.” “You must have been taken,” I protested. “I am telling the truth.” “Did you have to prove who you were before they would take you back?” He laughed. “No, they knew.”

  While waiting in the car, we had eaten the remains of our food. It was still light: I could still see the trees; I wanted to see them. I said to him: “You know that I am trying to trace a girl. Have you any information as to where she may be?” “She’s in a room.” He was joking. I would get nothing from him. I needed to speak to her. I was exhausted and lay on the ground – it was frozen; there was no light or water; she lived in a destroyed town; she could only hope to get one kind of work. The bridges were down, nothing would be done; it was impossible – there was no point in looking for the girl: the town was erased, nothing remained, she had been killed, people lived in holes, nothing lived above the ground.

  The lorry returned, filled with soldiers armed with sub-machine guns. The commander was in civilian clothes. He had heard of my change in plans, and he made it clear that he and his men would accompany me. “I have come to offer you an escort for your journey.” “That is most thoughtful of you,” I replied, “but there is no need for me to take advantage of your generosity. I came this far without an escort, and I think I can manage the rest alone.” “Then I shall follow you.” “In that case I shall be delighted to have your company. I shall be leaving immediately.” We shook hands, and he walked back to the lorry. My driver mumbled: “I don’t like it. That’s bad.” He studied his map: “Don’t you think it would be better if we went through the forest tomorrow rather than tonight?” I agreed. I had had enough. I told him to inform the commander. “From now on he must be advised of my plans or change of plans.” We could not take the route by which we had come. The temporary wooden bridge had been swept away by the spring floods.

  White clouds and sunlight: the winter had gone. Spring revealed the tears in our clothes. The troops put up a prefabricated shed. The length of the pieces varied, but the thickness was five inches by five inches, tongued on one side, grooved on the opposite edge – one piece slotted into the other. The commander shouted orders: “We need twelve hundred blocks to build a house. Work with fury. March. March. A town can be built in this way.” It was for my benefit. They cemented the floor and the walls; the long process ended, the floor soon spoilt – the whitened stone got coated with mud. I asked why they were building a house so isolated in the forest. They blew up the house and burned the greater part of the two remaining walls. Under the open sky they assembled the planks and wooden frames to construct the wooden shed which was to serve as a temporary shelter until the house could be rebuilt in a proper manner, and they slung petrol over the wood and fired bullets into the pile.