Europe After the Rain

by Alan Burns

  My courage was upheld. I organized an office “to help the victims of war”. A few friends assembled in my room. Hundreds of persons worked together; the organization was perfect – daily it dealt with missing soldiers, money matters, food – every detail of everyday life. We were in touch with both sides. We forced the belligerents to respect our neutrality. We gave of our resources, with punctilious impartiality, most lavish generosity. Wounded soldiers were met by ladies with drinks and cigarettes when their train stopped. So long as they travelled behind the lines, they were attended by ladies who served as nurses.

  At a luncheon for sixty or seventy people to support the hospital for severe surgical cases, for the sick who could not be cured, I was the guest of honour. I could not speak. I attempted, without the aid of grammar. “What is he saying?” “You should be able to understand. I am endeavouring to speak your language.”

  A fine-looking man – the son, transformed, doomed to meet his death – stopped to talk to me on his way back. He had been dying on the battlefields. I invited him to lunch. I was filled with admiration for what he had seen. He ruined my velvet-covered furniture by scraping his greased boots over it. The incident gave rise to satirical verses. He was a troublemaker who tried to kidnap and kill, but the plan was found out; troops were summoned, with instructions to shoot on sight. So order was restored. A strike was called; no papers were printed; the town was still. I could not find out; men and women were falling; soldiers caught the disease; the schools were turned into hospitals; thousands died. Bread was sold by card. A relative sent me all I needed from home, but I could not cook the food – the people’s police were free to enter. The drenching rain followed us everywhere. I found a room unoccupied, and there I sat on a chair. It was raining on the bright uniforms. Shivering, weary, unable to walk, ill and tired, I discussed plans for my return, and for the return of those who planned the commander’s fall. They were willing to help me return, to simplify their own problem; they took care to protect their own. I was ordered to keep watch on the daughter – they suspected her. I waited for the long train carrying soldiers from one part of the country to another – men without boots, with no food; crowds waited for the train – they had to make sure of their places. I slept on the platform with a block of wood for a pillow. I could not sleep. The others slept and could not wake, and when they woke they shouted or wept. Because they could hate, apathy in death was easy. Indifferent, they celebrated hysterically, which intensified their indifference. They had worked but not owned, they had had no chance and no choice, no ration of life, no notion of danger, the threat to life, to their own. A mobile kitchen arrived, with soup and potatoes. After the crowd had had their food, they sang. I travelled with blinds drawn against all contact en route.

  Chapter 10

  I arrived back without disaster. An hour later and I would have been caught in a storm. As it was, I was her guest. She was well clothed and well fed. She said she had been attacked: “He came in the night; the commander tried to set fire to my room.” She was talking in an even more excited manner than usual. “He came last night and dragged me from my bed. I had to make room for some other women.” Then came a long, involved story. At first she said three women were brought into the room, then it was five, then ten. I doubted whether any figure was the true one – it was not possible, it was not reasonable, to suppose it had happened.

  She knew she was watched – she felt the breath on her neck – but she was ignorant of what was going on; she did not know she had been cruelly treated. I told her nothing – I left her alone on the other side of the room. She asked for my opinion; I gravely replied, going through the farce. She had suffered: she told me quietly about being in prison with dangerous neighbours mysteriously dying; the walled darkness; the sound of sighing; intricate and jealous people inserting poison under her skin. I smiled at her grotesque accumulation of horrors. She said: “It’s true.” She knew her father no longer trusted her, but she felt she had done all she had been asked to do. She would not believe her brother had died. She belonged to nobody, but she was under the control of two masters, imbeciles and idiots. I made attempts to help her – I brought her parcels of sweets and chocolates, cakes and all kinds of confectionery. Suddenly the gifts were stopped.

  A picnic had been arranged. The weather was very cold. I received from the commander a box and a letter, a glittering gift. He was old and ill, hobbling on one leg – there was a wound in his foot which would not heal. “You must stay,” he said. “We’ll have a party.” I noted his defeat, his age. No one enjoyed the party; we stayed indoors and played cards. He no longer had any hope, but he heroically went through the ordeal; although hatred had marked his face, his eyes showed no sign. He did not shake hands – he thought only about war; he did not want anyone; he did not want us to leave; he was helpless; he himself had to go; he wanted to shake hands with everyone, to remain part of things. He talked endlessly of his dogs: “I had the last one shot. He killed a prisoner, he pulled down an old woman – I had to have him shot. I am training his successor – I hope to get better results, but he is putting on weight.” There was a note of insanity in his uniform, rich garments blazing with jewels, and the girl, who accompanied him, was gorgeously dressed. “The girl is my mascot; if I cannot bring her where I please, I will leave.” There was a gasp. She was slow-moving and short-sighted; she found it difficult to see in the crowd; she followed him with grim persistence. The commander led us outside – we danced in the garden; from the camp hundreds of voices lifted; he urged us to enjoy ourselves. “You can go hunting. The organization is superb. The guests can choose. The shooting is done from the tower.” “Kill for fun?” one of the guests asked. The commander did not reply; he blinked. I had an impression of yellow fire – the explosions of battle – as his troops retreated towards the camp.

  He brought us indoors; we talked for hours in the great hall – the yellow-tiled roof supported by pillars, the darkened room lit by candles, the wax dripped over the gold. Each of us was presented with a medal with a piece of silk or skin attached to it, supposedly a ribbon. We were entertained by women playing music, keeping time with their bare toes. As there were no men, one woman played the part of a man. They looked like mushrooms, each mushroom a girl crouched under a hat, bending so they touched the ground. It was amusing to watch their backs; one lost her footing and rolled over – she was seized by the legs and pulled along. Divided from the women by the width of the room, the guards watched in silence. Two girls carried fire from behind a screen in iron dishes as tall as themselves; suffering magnified their limbs; no greetings, no word, the wind rising, their voices lamented; I could not distinguish one from the other; we went on eating, their breasts hanging over us like long potatoes. The sound of drums on stage confused with exploding shells outside; the building was roofed with tiles, the pillars painted, the walls streaked with lime. She was seated in shadow, her face oval in the dim room; she carried an umbrella, which she twirled to prevent any man staring at her; she offered me a bowl of milk, placing it on the ground at my feet; it was not necessary to know what she meant by the movement – there was no mystery – she used a poem to kill. The troops were outside – there was no time for marriage; I gave her some clothes, but she would not put them on – she sent them out of the room. Because she had been bitten by one of the dogs she kept her face half hidden. I had only to wait; the idea was to do nothing at all. The stage was a fortress surrounded by a wall, loopholed; on either side were piles of grenades for the last troops who kept guard. The crumbling of the place brought out the rats and other vermin; circus dogs dressed in yellow, wearing caps, trotted on money. Her hunger was so strong, her flesh was like earth that disappears; with her skirt held up she ran with the spotlight, she scrambled for paper and rubber; there was no space; she had no form; she drifted in the strong light; in the haze of dust her face was white, her body bare; she wore no jewels; I had no desire at all. She was ashamed of the ugliness of her leg
s – a feather had been tied to each ankle; her head swung from left to right – she pretended to be absorbed – staggered round. The commander said: “Duties are taught to the girls. They used to live by making mats, now they are kept alive and not ill-treated.” Her answer was a smile – indifferent, divine as an almond. An explosion shattered the lights, brought tiles and plaster crashing onto the stage; the commander brought torches and placed them near her; her legs with gestures invited me to enter. I put on my coat. She sang a song, waved a flag, advanced, stumbled against the dark walls; I could see her feet in the rubble and dust – the two legs blazed white, the heavy head hung on the long neck, inconceivably slender.

  In silver, infinitely high, the commander raced by in one of his great cars. White cloths were spread on the ground; women shouted – they were forced into doorways – women made themselves into wheels. She ran with them, stones swinging above her lips; she threw flowers through the windows. The commander stopped for her, rode with her, a rug around his shoulders as big as a town and tipped with metal. They walked across the wide plain, a wind blowing vast blue – his gigantic forehead, her eyes splashed with gold, dogs in a gale, lost in its sugared darkness. Her hair was unclipped, touched with dyes, decorated with blue beads; she wore a collar loosely round her neck; on her back embroidered stripes of yellow and blue; a cap on her head; her long hair parted in the middle, scented and sleek.

  He allowed her to search the mouths of the dead – the gold in their mouths was increasing in value. She brought her dead to the river, where they were torn by fishes; perhaps I had never seen them seven feet away – I saw each move; I watched; during all that eventful time I saw nothing impossible. He had to train her in the work. She came to deliver his share – he tried to take one from her; she refused to part with it; there was noise, face to face, each grasping the dead, with feet fixed, to get more. He took it; she got away with the gold from the teeth – she hid the bits of gold in her own mouth; this annoyed him – he grabbed at her mouth, got a hold on the tongue; she shrieked, dragging – at last she freed herself – she dragged herself away. He went on as if nothing had happened. She was left wandering, unable to feed herself, away from the others, her mouth a mass of cotton wool; oblivious to what was happening, they sat close together again and watched the flies round the bodies. The food cry was heard and the heads went up; the cry repeated time after time. Disturbed, she gave the cry, went up to the body and touched it, dragged it down as the others crowded round, clamoured for it, each one desperate for it. She wrenched off the leg, jabbed it – thick end first – into her mouth, tried hard to swallow it, could not get it down; the thicker part became less visible – there was nothing but the foot; she twisted off the protruding foot. Holding the body, she twisted it, with a cutting and pulling action; with a final twist the limb was removed. She knew how to do it. The limbs were small; then they increased in size, and became too large – then only the rats dared to go; the rest were left starving. The commander’s voice was heard; she crept into a sheltered corner, close to him.

  The cages were broken – the crowd had got loose and invaded the shops. Though they picked up weapons, they remained victims – blind, breaking down, drowning. They were driven out between the roofs; the crowd cried slaughter – they had a passion for picking things to pieces; they found crowbars; they moved with plunder; grew to great size; fought for a place of power; they had no leader – were angry, with a new kind of headlong terror – a clumsy plunging and bounding. The old man’s face was red, overfed. One hand hung, his face terrible. They watched his face in order to defeat his plan. He had failed to find others to carry him. He threw them bread, but they did not run for scraps. He went into the street and stood whining, spent time sitting and looking at the rain. They rushed at him from opposite points, two or three at a time. He was not allowed to reach home. He dashed back between walls; in sweeps and curves and rushing and collision he shook them off. He used his nails, a stone. They circled round, five yards from the walls. His favourite dog had gone – I had seen him tormenting the dog who hated him; the dog had learnt to watch. He peered in at windows, at the heat, longing for the fire. Someone threw a stone, and in a minute a dozen others followed. They chased him with shouting – they tried to kill him by grinding his head on a stone, rubbed it on the ground, split the skin of his forehead and crushed one of his ears. Without her help he could not reach home. She sprang on him, opened his mouth, scooped out the spit while he chattered. He had to wait till she had finished or went mad. She put on prisoners’ clothes, mounted the goat; they came closer; he glanced at her with begging eyes. She threw him backwards, leaping; he struck the hot embers piled together, dropped, received in the face the hot coal. She started laughing; he filled his fist full of clear glass, passed a slow hand down, lost interest, waited. He would kill himself. She slit his nostrils. The final sound when they slit. And when they slit it was impossible. He received blows from thick sticks – he staggered round, blind with blood; exhausted, he fell against a cage, dragged himself through the electric wires; for a moment he was confined in a dome with an iron floor – it was painful to touch the electrified metal; he crashed through the glass and was seized on the other side. They put sticks into his mouth – little by little he died, disfigured. He was tied to a post; sticks were thrown at him; they would kill him in the end; he was not left to bleed to death – he was maimed, spreadeagled on his back; forked pegs held down his hands and feet; he cried slaughter; others attacked him and held him down; he cried slaughter – their cry; he was beaten to death in the dark, given the name of stone, shaved and blackened, hung by his feet from the branch of a tree.

  This punishment was inflicted – that is how he was treated when he was too old to be of any use. His foot may have been cut off with a heavy knife and put into his mouth. Presumably it would cause his death. If not, the throat was cut.

  A horse galloped in the street; the hall collapsed; the walls were not intact – the old walls had fallen – there was nothing left. There were the feet of two stone monuments, the left inscribed, the right without writing; the central block had a square of iron remaining – the rest had disintegrated; there would be no restoration. The old man and the old woman were no longer in existence – those old people found on the corners of streets; they were too frail – they were wiped out when disaster came.

  I concealed myself close by, cut off from the crowd. Nothing happened. He remained motionless – his brains had probably, without warning, dropped to the ground. He remained; stillness maintained; there was no cause to walk across the intervening inches; stillness maintained for hours, except for slight alterations of the eyes. The eyes were closed at times. I saw his head – long, rounded, the trunk projecting beyond the grey head, finely lined; bristles around the mouth; the outer bristles tipped with white; the effect extraordinarily twisted – serrated like the teeth of an iron comb – the comb used to clean the bristles around the mouth. We stayed close for hours – two enemies; my eyes passed over the bits of twisted wood, the edges of which – little bits of brown and grey bark – represented discovery through half-closed eyes. He was not far away – wounded, crouched, sinking; he could have stood up. I saw him laid on the stones like a bit of stick, bare earth underneath, some kind of resting place – leaf mould, bracken crushed flat by the weight. His skin was dull grey turning white, barred and streaked, pencilled with grey. Our two bodies placed side by side were small, hardly to be seen – bits of stone or grit which the eye passed over.

  Chapter 11

  People put on their best clothes and went into the streets; they put on fancy dress, they wore headdresses and capes, and came and went, offering congratulations to one another. People like roaming dragons, people in furs like flowing water: their noisy shouts filled the streets, they opened shops and began business. Their lights were lit, scattering lantern flowers, scattering customers – a hundred thousand lamps were lit at night, scattered on stoves, the gates, the do
ors, convenient blocks of stone. Like fireflies, stars, to the sound of drums they were put out under silk coverings with floating banners and small objects carried in front: artificial flowers specially made, flowers of all seasons, with painted scenes moulded out of ice and from cheap tin imported from abroad, and from shoots of wheat by order, symbolic figures of men and animals. All shops displayed her father’s face – each window larger than twelve by twelve held a photo of his face – her father’s face in every street in frames of wood, in frames of silk and glass, with small pieces of silver and gold secretly put inside. The night was filled officially, with official fireworks of every variety imported from the east, three hundred small boxes, a thousand flower pots, fifteen fire-and-smoke pools, twenty-two thousand rockets, ten peonies strung on a thread, forty plates sprinkled with water, twenty golden plates, thirty pinwheels, thirty falling moons, dozens of flags of fire, fifteen hundred double-kicking feet, a thousand fire crackers which exploded on the ground and then again in the air, ten explosions flying to heaven, five devils noisily splitting apart, ten bombs for attacking the city, eight eight-cornered rockets, a hundred lanterns of heaven and earth, twelve silver flowers, twelve trees of fire – the sounds dinned the ears, the flashes darkened the eyes, the dust from the feet gradually lessened, the shadows fell stretched on the ground.