Wars I Have Seen

by Gertrude Stein

  I always do think that what the French really have most cause to be proud of but that they have no feeling about they take it as it comes and that is that Savoy and Alsace and Lorraine, and Nice and the Riviera, all which has only been French hardly a hundred years yet, they all wanted to stay with a defeated France they did not want to go to the victorious enemy Germany and Italy from which they had only been detached hardly a hundred years. Yes France has that.

  And so this war goes on just like that, and it well not suddenly but certainly is coming nearer and nearer to not being a war at all. This war is like that.

  Just now and here the war is mostly the struggle the mayor has in finding men to guard the railway lines, they do not want to go out on cold nights and be chilled and the mayor has to find them and they are so few of them left and they want to be in bed at night to be as warm as they can be and so every day the mayor tries to find them, he has a Swiss wife and they are very nice and he tries to find enough men to guard the railway by day and by night, and anyway as when they are there they shelter away from the weather and they are not around and it is cold at night even in November.

  In Bilignin I know other people but mostly farmers here I knew other people mostly railroad workers, they are not at all like farmers not at all. On the whole I think farmers more interesting, they are more interesting. They are not as generous not as kindly not as lively but they are more interesting, French farmers are more interesting.

  It is natural to remember places.

  In these days of October and November ’43 it is natural to remember Modane. For so many years it was not natural to remember Modane and now it is natural to remember Modane. Here at Culoz is the place where the trains switch off to go to Italy, and that is where we are living now, in the days when we used to go to Italy every summer we went by Modane, I did not remember Culoz, Modane, the early morning at Modane, and then we went to Italy by the Saint Gothard that is by way of Switzerland and then we did not go to Italy at all but always there had been Modane and now and here the trains go to Modane all the time that Italy was in the war the coal trains went to Modane, coal and coal and coal went to Modane and then soldiers went to Modane and now Modane is bombed and trains do not go to Modane, and then the trains began again to go to Modane and now Modane is bombed again and the trains once more are not going to Modane and so any day and every day just now it is natural to remember Modane.

  And we do still go to Chambery in the train and there was no window glass in the windows and they all said there were in the third class compartments but there were none in the second class compartments and they said however since they had paid for second class they would stay in the second class even if there were no panes in the windows. Basket our white poodle had his ear bitten and it was bleeding when we went to Chambery to-day, but everybody said he was very beautiful just the same. That is what can happen any day. And there are other things.

  There is the son of our dentist. There is some more of that story. There naturally is as the days go on and a little fear goes on any day and a fair amount of excitement goes on any day, and a great deal of anticipation goes on any day, and a fair amount of food these days, in some places, quite a fair amount, and there is always a reason why, always.

  No these days of ending the war have nothing to do with the nineteenth century nothing at all, not anything at all, every few days I read a play of Shakespeare and it is more like that tragedy, unless if you will that is everybody knows that there will be no progress anybody knows that there will be no progress everybody knows everybody knows that there will be no progress but there will be insecurity and there will be courage and fear, and hope and death and sickness and health, and strength and terror, and they will go on and nobody will want to give anybody what is not theirs to give nor theirs to take no nobody at all, and the nineteenth century is dead stone dead on this month of November in 1943.

  Do not let it alone because everybody is patriotic, do not let alone because nobody is confused, it is progress that confuses, not patriotism and fear and struggle and life and death, not not at all and this is what happened to the dentist’s boy.

  It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself, sometimes it has worse attacks of it than at other times, sometimes it is that history has a perfect outbreak of repetitions it always does of course repeat itself but sometimes it is that the repetitions are quite far apart but just now that is November 1943 it is just full of them full of repetitions of nothing but repetitions. It repeats all the Balkan wars all the difficulties between France and England all the German defeats, and it repeats all Italian history and it repeats well not exactly repeats it was in 1915 that it was said that Russia was a steam roller but then it did not roll, now it is not said but it is a steam roller and it rolls. The United States and Russia belonging to a new century do not repeat themselves, not yet, of course sometime they will but they have not done so yet, not yet, Japan yes, it was bombarded by the Americans to be opened and now it will be bombarded to be closed, that might be well called a repetition but to come back to the dentist’s son.

  We were very upset, some months ago to know that he had been taken away to prison, he had as a young fellow of seventeen joined the crowd in Savoy who were getting ready and getting ready meant preparing and preparing meant hiding things to use and hiding things to use meant hiding them in his room. And it came out and he was taken away and it was an awful day. The father was a Serb and the mother a courageous French woman daughter of generations of scientists and soldiers and she did everything to take care of him. But he was taken away and everything happened except that he was not dead. And this was done by the Italians and they took him far away into Italy. The next thing she knew was that he had been condemned to five years hard labor and she had seen him but once again and then she had given him his civil papers, then when everything had been done. She managed to do this. Then the Italians went out of the war and the prison was left open by them, go away the guards said as they were leaving and of course they all went away, some went one way and some went another way but the young ones naturally wanted to go where they would meet Americans, naturally enough. Then they got on the way but they found out it would be a very long way so some of them and among them two of them went another way. They got into the mountains and everybody they met was carrying large bundles, they were bundles of shoes and clothing, and so they went in the same direction and they found quantities of shoes and clothing belonging to the Italian army that had abandoned them and so they helped themselves splendidly. And then they had to go away, they found the quantities of shoes very useful, they traded them for food and guides and everybody was kind to them and one man who knew all the little roads took them high up in the Alps, and they got across the frontier and were back again where they came from and as his mother had given him his civil papers, that was the kind of a mother she was she thought of everything and had courage enough to do anything they went on. But their shoes the Italian army shoes made the peasants suspicious and they told the national policeman, who took them, now said he looking at them tell me the true story and they did, and when they did he said all right dont tell anybody about me, and then they went on, they got into a German truck with German soldiers and the German soldiers were eating bread and butter and the two of them were very hungry and the German soldiers gave them bread but not butter but all the same it was very welcome. And so they came home, and the mother was so happy to have him and he stayed with her for three days, bathing from morning to evening and eating and having his photograph taken so she would have something to remember him and then he said now we must go and she said where and he said to join my comrades, do not worry he said to his mother it is like being a soldier do not worry, and then he went away and now he is gone again. She said you see the young feel differently about it, if they are shot well it does not mean the same thing to them that it does to us, not the same thing.

  And so every day makes some people more cheerful
and some people not so cheerful and there is the same reason why. As for instance.

  Every day can be any day just now.

  It was a dark day and a Tuesday and I went to see a friend who was not well and she had four sons and one was still a prisoner of war and the other on a boat in Indo-China and one who had been a prisoner had escaped after trying twice and succeeding at last and the other was not very well, well anyway when I left it was late in the afternoon and there was a glow in the sky and I went up the mountain there is a very big steep one right in back a real mountain and they bring wood down from the top of it by a cable. I went higher and higher and the water was falling down the mountain side louder and louder and it was very nice and cold quite cold and getting darker. I like it getting darker and as I was going up higher and higher and it was Sunday and nobody was working as it was getting darker I began to meet groups of men coming down from the mountain and I said how do you do and they said how do you do. And then as it was really getting darker I turned around to come down again, and it was very dark and darker and it began to rain and snow and sleet, and I could not see but I could feel the crunch of the gravel under my feet and so I could stay on the path and all around me I heard others coming down too and there were in little groups about twenty-five men who passed me and they went quickly and I went slower and I was getting wetter and wetter and I wondered why there were so many men of a Sunday coming down the mountain and then as I came back very wet and they all passed me I supposed they were the men who are taking heather doing the maquis as it is called from Corsica where it has been done like in Scotland for so many centuries and they probably come down every night particularly in winter when policemen stay at home and they come down and have a good dinner with their family and get warm and spend the night and go back again before the policemen can think that anything is the matter, not that any of the policemen really are very interested in finding anybody that is hidden, not they.

  And so every day is any day.

  I was taking a sixteen kilometer walk, I do do this very often and sometimes when I have bread to carry, I sometimes do have white bread and cake to carry I sometimes take an autobus, and that day I had a good deal to carry and the dog to manage and somebody helped me and I knew her and just then I met the dwarf of Culoz and I shook hands with him, I always say how do you do to a dwarf, I say how do you do to anybody and I always say how do you do to a dwarf, and he shook hands with me and then he shook hands with her. She was surprised but any way that did not matter and when we both got out of the autobus and walked a bit together I said you are married now and have a child, yes she said and my husband is a soldier that is an officer, and I said where is he now while you stay with your mother and she said he is in a military prison in the rue Cherche Midi in Paris, in solitary confinement. And what ever for I said, Ah she said, I do not know nor probably does he, it is so easy these days to go to prison any indiscretion any little indiscretion and he was always interested in ameliorating the social condition of the soldier, but you hear from him, not at all, but I send him packages my sister, she does not see him, but he gives her his dirty linen and she brings him clean linen so we know well that is all I do know, she said and we said good-bye and she said it is useless to have illusions that they will let him out before the end and we said good-bye, and I had known her as a quite young girl, because they had a nice house where the exiled king and his sister were once supposed to visit her great grandmother. And the children used to play that they came on a white horse and were the exiled king and his sister and were paying a visit to their great grandmother.

  And so going on.

  We had a friend whose name was Gilbert and he was gone away and his wife followed him and the little girl Christine was left behind with some neighbors, we did not know them and one day a red-headed and active young fellow asked for me and I saw him and I said what and he said I have a message to you from Gilbert, ah I said is the little girl not well, oh yes he said she is all right she is staying with us, ah yes I said, do you need anything for her, I said and he said no she was all right and he was fiddling with a matchbox and I said well and he said the message is in here and I said you had better go, and he said are you afraid of me and I said no and you had better go and dont you want the message he said and I said no you had better go and he said I will go and he had tears in his eyes and he went out and told the servant that we had not received his message and a friend said were you not curious and I said no not.

  There are so many ends to stories these days so many ends that it is not like it was there is nothing to be curious about except small things, food and the weather. The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that. Anybody can talk and everybody does do that, even if they come in again or go out again which they do. And then there is Victor. We are very fond of Victor although there is no reason why and yet there is he is Victor and loved by his family.

  The only ones who are really grateful for the war are the wild ducks, such a lot of them in the marshes of the Rhone and so peaceful, usually at this season they are very troubled, no sooner settled down then pop pop the country full of hunters hunting them and they have to fly away, now quantities of them sit there on the pleasant bits of water surrounded by high marsh ferns and they are so peaceful, nobody can touch them nobody, because all the shot-guns have been taken away completely taken away and nobody can shoot with them nobody at all and the wild ducks are very content. They act as if they had never been shot at, never, it is so easy to form old habits again, so very easy.

  When I first came to France it was before there were automobiles in Paris, and almost everybody who was not otherwise engaged was pulling or pushing a push-cart and quite rapidly, the French move very quickly with them and then gradually the automobiles filled the streets and the roads and pushing and pulling of push-carts became too dangerous an occupation and so gradually nobody had one and nobody pushed or pulled them. In those early days all artisans had them all house painters and all plumbers and all sellers of anything, there are still a few who push them even in the days of automobiles but that is only to get to a corner somewhere and sell something, even that does not seem to be too legal because they are always being carried off to the police station, and there is nothing more helpless than a pushcart filled with vegetables or anything and standing all alone and neglected in front of a police station. I always wondered if anybody would ever push them again, but I suppose really their owners were never sent to prison probably they just had to pay a fine or something, or their licence was not right or something and they come back to push or pull it before the vegetables and fruit were too faded to sell.

  But now in this year of 1943 push-carts every kind of push-cart on every kind of road and all ages pushing and pulling and so many kilometers and filled with anything and everything, the roads are full of them, every size and shape from small baby-carriages to almost a full sized wagon. They push them twenty kilometers sometimes when they go off to get chestnuts and besides that there is the constant carrying of grass to feed rabbits and goats and anything that can be fed and then eaten. Bicycles and push-carts, rarely anybody not carrying or pushing something so rarely that it just does not exist.

  But to come back to Victor, Victor and his father have hunting dogs two of them but of course they cannot hunt and they grow vegetables and these get pushed in the push-cart and the family are bakers and Victor is the only boy and he has three sisters and how they all love Victor. He is very sweet is Victor and fond of children and now he is twenty years old and has gone to the Camp de Jeunesse, and he was always very well fed and he caught a bad sore throat and he came back and he looked very thin when he came back for twenty days’ convalescent leave. And he was a little bette
r but not well enough and he decided he did not want to go back, and his family who loved him did not want him to go back because any day he might have to go further, so he must hide himself and that is very easy, from one village you go to another village and in that other village nobody says anything and nobody hunts him up because it takes the papers a very long time to go forward and back and when he is not where he was the papers have to go back again and sometimes they just stay where they were and where their family is but that is more difficult, the time might come but going forward and back between these villages that is fairly safe quite safe enough for any of them except the mother who does tremble, they all love him but the mother does tremble, every once in a while she trembles a little every once in a while.