by Belva Plain
Where are his orders? The telephone jangles, he races and picks it up, but the roar is in his ears, all he can hear is a crackle, and has to guess what he’s being told, has to think for himself. What’s there to think about, though? Only fire! Fire! He knows when they get near enough, so it will count. He knows.
Now another roar, entirely different, with a buzzing in it. He looks up; three aeroplanes move across his narrow segment of sky. Three. But there may be more.
He looks back into the periscope and sees explosions all along the German line, attacks from the air. Then he catches sight of one machine swooping low, and flame bursts all along the line. They’re firing machine guns from the air. Incredible!
It looks as though they’re cutting Fritz down. But you can’t depend on aeroplanes. It worked this time; that doesn’t mean it will work again. Fritz was not really ready this time, that’s all. He’ll be back tomorrow, better prepared.
Suddenly he realizes that the shelling has stopped. It has been more than thirty seconds, surely. He counts. Thirty, forty, fifty. He waits. The men look up questioning, doubtful, hopeful. Two minutes, and three. Yes, they’ve stopped. Tomorrow, then. But respite for today.
Silence. A relative silence. Always there is the rumble of distant guns somewhere. It’s said they can be heard across the Channel. They’re in the north now, in the British sector. But here there is vast relief. The men stretch. They look green.
“Well, we’re still here,” Paul says. “Maybe we should try to catch some sleep while we can. Daniels, you stand sentry. You’ll be relieved before mess.”
Now at last he goes below and stretches out to sleep, with his hands behind his head. His whole body still feels vibration in the air, and sleep can’t come.
His thoughts move restlessly like water, without form.
He can still hear the far-off pounding in the north. A few hours’ journey by rail, if this were a normal day, and he would be in Germany. In a street of gables, clock-towers, and medieval cobble-stones, he’d meet his cousins, men of his blood, even though three generations removed. Three are not so many.
In the town garden, walking under the lamps after a night of beer and sauerbraten, their footsteps had rung. He remembered the day they bought Freddy’s dachshund. The gate’s creak set a dozen of the foolish little creatures barking with the ferocity of lions. At the railroad station, Joachim had put his arms around him.
“Auf wiedersehen”—not adieu—“auf wiedersehen, till we meet again,” he said, in his careful English.
Meet again! Now he was in the uniform of his Vaterland. Strange, this fierce conviction, being ready to die for that one-armed tyrant Wilhelm. Especially when the tyrant and all his kind despised you.
But things are changing rapidly, Joachim had argued. Germany was the most civilized country in the world. His will be a grand career; nothing stands in the way. His sister has just married into a prominent German family, of Jewish faith, of course, but German through and through. The future couldn’t shine more brightly for the family.
“Sir!”
Paul starts; he must have fallen asleep, after all. Koslinski is standing with a tin plate in his hand.
“Thought you might want some of this. It’s stew. McCarthy got six cans in the mail. It’s heated up.”
“Tell him I thank him,” Paul said. “And thank you. Put it here. And oh, Koslinski, relieve Daniels. I fell asleep.”
“I’ve already done it, sir.” The eyes, buried between jutting cheeks and forehead, are scornful.
“Thank you.”
Paul sniffs the stew. It’s good and hot, though it’s mostly potatoes and carrots. Well, what did you expect out of a can? But awfully good. Koslinski really does despise me.… That pounding up north has stopped. With a piece of bread that he’d stuck in his pocket, he sops up the gravy. It’s gotten very quiet. Except—he hears something. It sounds like a wail.
He goes up the steps, carrying the empty tin.
“Do I hear crying? Wailing?”
“Yessir. It’s been going on for an hour. Must be some poor bugger caught on the wire,” someone answers.
“Or beyond,” says Koslinski, correcting. “It’s farther out.”
It’s a thin sound. Suddenly it rises, grows stronger, and ends in a squeal.
Daniels makes a grimace. “Sounds like a pig slaughter,” he says, shuddering.
He’s from a farm in upstate New York. An unfortunate simile, Paul thinks.
It’s growing louder and it’s awful. Paul sits down. One must simply shut one’s ears; this is another sound of war, that’s all. But he wonders why the medics haven’t gone for him, and says so.
“I think they tried, sir,” Drummond answers. “Over from section forty-two, it looked like. I took a look-see through the periscope. He’s too far out and covered by German guns over to the right.”
“I’ll take a look myself,” Paul says.
He doesn’t know why he wants to. Morbid curiosity? The light is going fast, so he adjusts the sight. Yes, yes, far out past the wire jungle, now half blown away by the day’s shelling, he can make out a shape, a darker gray lump against the fading gray day. The fellow must have crawled out of a shell hole. A sapper, probably, gone far ahead of the line. The shape moves, humping and thrashing. For an instant, something is flung up, an arm or a leg, one can’t tell which.
Paul gets down. God, one ought to be allowed to shoot! We’re more merciful to a wounded horse. Not that I’d like to be the one to do it. Still, I’d want someone to do it for me. No one would, though. God! The terror he must feel if he’s still conscious, and he must be, thrashing about like that.
Paul drinks hot coffee. His men are talking among themselves, talking very low as if the Germans were next door. You got used to talking very low, when there was quiet. Voices carry at night. He catches some of what they’re saying, something about getting laid by a widow with five kids. They’re laughing. Good! It will take their minds off tomorrow for a little while.
The cries grow louder. Then there’s a scream so terrible that the men stop talking and look at each other.
“He’ll die soon, probably,” McCarthy says bleakly.
He doesn’t. Darkness falls, the men stand to and stand down, and still the screaming goes on. It’s getting worse. It’s intolerable.
Something jumps in Paul. My nerves can’t stand the screams, he says to himself. I’m going for him.
He springs up and says it out loud: “I’m going for him.”
The men stare at him. They are not sure they’ve heard correctly.
“It’s almost dark!” he exclaims, “And I’ve got fixed in my mind where he is.”
“Sir,” says Koslinski, “it’s suicide.”
“No. I’ll take a wire cutter, may not even need it, the way they’ve shelled.”
The men can’t believe he means what he says.
“He’s too far out.”
“Sir … there’s no point risking yourself.”
“If the medics could reach him, they would, sir.”
“Wait until dark when the wiring party goes out for repairs, at least,” Drummond suggests.
“That’s hours away. He may be dead by then,” Paul answers.
“It’s suicide,” Koslinski repeats. “Why do you want to do that?”
If he tells them that he can’t stand the man’s cries, they’ll think he’s crazy. And maybe he is at this point, although he doesn’t think so.
“I’m going.”
He climbs to the fire step and looks over the top. The sky is white and it’s barely light enough, if one strains, to see motion on the field.
“It’s crazy,” Koslinski says, meaning you’re crazy, but that’s not something a man says to his commanding officer.
Paul scans the field. If he crawls, staying low, from hollow to hollow, flattening himself, they may not see him (that’s stupid; of course they will). But still, if they do, he’s too far away to hit with a grenade, and bullets will pas
s above him. Wriggle like a snake. And wriggle back like a snake, too, carrying the man?
“Don’t go, sir,” says young McCarthy. “Don’t do it.”
The screams have turned into a bellow, the most hideous, agonizing lament under the heavens. If I live to a thousand, I’ll never forget it, Paul thinks, and swings himself up over the top and plunges, gets down on all fours, and starts to crawl.
A snaggled end of barbed wire tears his hand. He shuts his eyes to protect them. He should have thought of heavier gloves. It is slow and painful, cutting wire. He thought he saw exactly where the wire barricade was destroyed, but he hasn’t got it right and he has to do a lot of cutting. Yet he is making a path, shoving the ends aside. He’ll be able to find it on the way back, he hopes.
So far, no one has seen him. He calculates that he’s been out about fifteen minutes. The terrible bellowing comes closer. This crawling position, keeping head down, is exhausting. His knees are torn, his hand is bleeding, and the back of his neck is a tormenting ache, but he mustn’t raise his head, must not. He lies down for a minute to rest, smearing his cheek with damp earth. It occurs to him that it would be prudent to turn back, but he takes another breath and starts on ahead.
Then he falls into a shell hole, landing on something soft, and eases out with a shudder, not wanting to think that the softness was a body, which he knows it must have been. A dead body, better off than the one who is still screaming. He imagines he can make out the words “please … oh, please,” but probably it is just a long drawn out e-e-e-e-e. He keeps crawling.
He’s there. He’s reached it. The shape is humped and now not moving, but still crying out. Somehow he wriggles himself beneath it, laying it over his prone back, with the arms drawn around his neck. It’s heavy, so its weight will keep it from rolling off. And he turns around. The way back will take much, much longer, of course.
It dawns on him that the men were right, that he really is crazy to do what he’s doing. But if this man who lies on his back goes on living because of him? “He who saves one life saves the whole world.” He remembers that from religious school. Hennie liked to quote it.
The man is hot and breathing heavily, snorting in Paul’s ears. The weight falls off; he wriggles it on again and they proceed. He stops with no breath left, and raises his head an instant to see how much farther it is.
At once there’s machine-gun fire. It passes over him and the earth spurts just ahead of him. They’ve seen his path. He stops and waits. They may think they’ve hit him if he waits without moving. He counts off seconds, and when he’s counted two minutes, starts crawling again. The guns rattle and the earth explodes. He’s in their sights; he’s in the center of a circle of explosions. Now, even if he stops moving, they know where he is; he has only a thousand-to-one chance of getting back, so he might as well keep going.
The rattle, whine, and thud seem now to come from everywhere, which is impossible; it only seems that way, as if he’s at the center of a circle, and from 360 degrees around him they are aiming bullets. He keeps crawling. Suddenly he is so certain of being hit that he is no longer panicked; it’s the end for him, no doubt about it, and he’s numb, calm, as if it had already happened. So he goes on, inch after inch.…
The crown of his head strikes something plump and firm: sandbags. Sandbags! He can’t believe it. But it’s not over yet. He lets his burden slide from his back, to take the final risk, to pull himself up and, crouching as low as possible, still heave the burden—from which now come not screams but stertorous, heavy groans—up onto the bags and roll it over into the trench, trusting that someone will catch it before it crashes. And then, with what must be his last strength, mount the parapet and tumble in.
Now is when it will happen, he thinks; I hope it’s my head, so I won’t feel anything and won’t live to be a cripple. At the instant I scramble up, that’s when it will come.
But it doesn’t come, and he is back after the last scramble, back on the floor of the trench, with his heart pounding so, he thinks he can taste its blood in his mouth, salty and sour.
His “burden” lies on the floor, faceup. The sky has gone abruptly black—that accounts for my escape, rather than bad aim, he thinks grimly—and the face is obscured. Anyway, everyone is staring not at the poor face but at the wound, a hole in the abdomen large enough to put two hands in. Blood leaks as if from a pouring spout or an emptying sack, while from the thing—was this a man?—the groans and gurgles are diminishing.
“The medics are on the way, sir,” Koslinski says.
Someone puts a rolled-up cloth, a makeshift pillow, under the head on the floor. It is a humane gesture, useless and unfelt. The groans grow fainter.
Someone thinks of asking Paul, “You all right, sir?”
“I’m sweating,” he answers. “Soaked,” and tries to pull away from the cloth that’s sticking to his shoulder blades.
“It’s not sweat, sir, it’s the guy’s blood,” Koslinski tells him, and stares at Paul, looking puzzled.
The medics come hurrying down the communication trench and kneel to look. The sounds have now stopped. The thing on the floor is still, quite still.
“He’s dead,” the medic says unnecessarily.
No one answers. They put the body on a stretcher and go hurrying back up the communication trench. No one says anything for a minute. How many bodies have they seen? How many more will they see? Yet this one has been different.
Then someone brings hot coffee for Paul. He doesn’t want it, but it’s something to be doing. They stand around watching while he drinks it.
“Jeez,” says “little” McCarthy, “he could have been a German, sir. You didn’t know.”
Suddenly Paul is too shaken to answer. The answer he would make if he could, would be, “What difference?” Some of them would understand that, and others would not. The way of the world.
They’re in awe of him. He sees it in their faces. It’s embarrassing. They’ve dispersed a bit, talking softly.
“He ought to make captain tomorrow morning,” he hears.
“Captain? Commander of the Allied army! Christ, what guts!” It’s Koslinski’s voice. “Not one in a million. Who’d ever think he—”
It’s really embarrassing. Brave? First I was mad with fear, then numb with it. It was only that I couldn’t stand the sound of that man’s agony. Poor bastard! I wonder whether he felt much pain. They say you don’t when you’re hit like that, you’re in shock. I don’t know. Poor bastard. Yet … I wasn’t a coward.
And suddenly he recalls one of Freddy’s first letters from the war: “I was so glad to find out I’m not a coward,” Freddy had written. And while Paul was moved by that, almost to the point of tears, he didn’t truly understand it; it seemed so youthful, so naive. Now he understands it and sees with what unjustifiable arrogance he once judged the simple words: I’m glad I wasn’t a coward.
Three years ago, that was. Ah, poor Freddy, where are you? But you’ll be all right. Having escaped harm for this long, it means you’re charmed and marked for survival.
Abruptly now, the sky lights up again with a blaze in the northwest. There is a distant rumble as in a summer storm, and again Paul has that flash, recalling a place he loved: the Adirondacks, and being a child safe in bed, with the fragrance of pine in the room.
“Somebody’s getting it.”
The men have mounted the fire step, poking their heads out into the night.
“How far you figure it is?”
“About forty miles, maybe.”
“The Limeys getting it, then. Must be up near Armentières, I guess.”
Paul raises his head toward the northern sky. Fountains of light erupt and cascade like waterfalls, like flowers, silver and scarlet, high, higher, over and over in unending splendor. Strange that it should be so beautiful, he thinks.
When those gorgeous lights die down over Armentières, it is clear that the tumultuous day has brought neither victory nor defeat, but only stalemate. Now it r
emains to get ready for the next day, repairing damage, bringing ammunition to the front, and carrying the casualties to the rear.
In the British lines, the wounded are being assembled for transport at the dressing station.
“This one has got it bad. Have a look.”
“Leg gone.”
“Blimey! Both of them, you think?”
“Sure. No question.”
“Looks like that Yank chap, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t know. Well, maybe. What was his name?”
“Fred something, I think. Ross? Something like that.”
“Well, look at the tags! We haven’t got all night!”
“Wait, wait a second. Here it is. I was right. It’s Fred Roth. R-o-t-h. Roth.”
“Well, take him up. We haven’t got all night.”
4
Angelique’s shocked disbelief had turned, with the passage of days, to indignation. “Where on earth has the man gone?” she demanded.
“He’s staying in his room over the lab,” Leah answered, glancing toward Hennie. “He told me to tell you if you asked.”
“I haven’t asked,” Hennie said.
So he had returned to the room that had been his home; there Freddy had been conceived; the snow had sifted so high on the windowsill that one could see it from the bed without raising one’s head; the shade had flapped in a hot summer wind; there the music had lain helter-skelter on top of the bulky old piano …
Suffer there! she thought. Mourn for your loss!
Angelique opened her knitting bag, closed it, and thrust it impatiently aside, as if to say: I am in no mood for anything as trivial as knitting.
“Charity!” the word was contemptuously thrown. “The great benefactor of humanity walks out, abandons his wife after twenty-three years!”
Hennie answered curtly. “He has not abandoned me. I sent him away. Let’s get that clear.”
“I don’t understand. You won’t talk. What is this all about? You won’t talk—”
Very quietly, Leah said, defying Angelique’s look of dislike, “Sometimes there are things people can’t talk about.”