by Victor Serge
The master turned a blind eye to his pupils’ expeditions, and, when they brought him books, gravely acknowledged the gift. The warrior-explorers, Argonauts, Conquistadors, Knights of the Round Table, or Teutonic heroes, as the fancy took them, unearthed all sorts of trophies in the volcano zone … The great trick was to detect a cave, unblock the entrance, and worm your way inside … And if, at the edge of the dark emptiness, you suddenly spied a convulsed hand or some grayish hair clinging to a bleached skull, you closed the lair and continued your explorations. Bad luck! Sometimes you penetrated into a kitchen or a bathroom, or the corner of a bedroom where the most extraordinary objects preserved a virginity appropriate to treasure troves. There might be a bag of potatoes, an umbrella, some books, a photograph album, a pretty fan decorated in faded watercolors (Charlotte and Werther … ), a slightly crushed camera, repairable and salable, clothing holed by bits of metal but still usable … Needless to say you had to watch out for the owners, real or pretend, the latter being the more vindictive; they materialized without warning, able to spot “their stuff” at twenty yards, they snatched the treasure, boxed your ears, and stormed off to complain to the parents or Herr Schiff! They were nicknamed the Winged Vampires. Fortunately, three-quarters of the Winged Vampires had disappeared. On the flank of Chimborazo a precisely printed sign proclaimed LOOTING IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH, Todestrafe, but that applied chiefly to inferior races, the escaped Poles, Russians, and Serbs who were rumored to be living deep underground, well below the level of cellars and shelters, creeping forth at night under cover of the bombs to attack the SS and people in uniform and to steal marmalade. The twelve-year-old explorer felt rather proud to be braving the Todestrafe, DEATH PENALTY.
* * *
If in truth a different world had ever existed, Brigitte would have retained a more convincing memory of it. Nonetheless, she did not doubt that the city had once been completely different, disoriented though she was by the changes being wrought by wave upon wave of destruction. Last week, the flat half-moon edifice of the chamber of commerce was still in its place, at the bottom of Grand Elector Plaza. The carcass of a bus sat rusting next to the kiosk that provided sweets, cigarettes, newspapers, and a wash-room. The bronze Grand Elector lay on his back on the lawn, his comical paunch swelling upward; the female figure from the pedestal had also fallen over and was sleeping on her side with her eyes open; she was holding a laurel branch and the Grand Elector, a book; they lay back to back is if they were quarreling. The main shopping artery still paraded its wounded façades and signboards over its vanished businesses. After last night’s hurricane, the artery was buried under a desert of scorched, blackened rubble, dusted with a powder as fine and light as mineral dew. The recumbent statues, the shell of the bus, the friendly news-and-chocolates building, the chamber of commerce itself were nowhere to be found: the whole square had slid sideways before being erased. Brigitte found herself wandering through an unfamiliar neighborhood where the downstairs of redbrick houses were still inhabited and some men in uniform were assembled in a conclave outside the door of a tavern, Bierstube. Someone shouted, “Hurry up there, Fraülein, the cleanup squad …” She nodded, yes, yes, and walked on. Soon she came to a mobile kitchen handing out soup to about a hundred people, several of whom were elegantly dressed. Humiliated at losing her way, Brigitte asked for directions. “Go right as far as Westphalia, then third left, that’s Marie-Louise Strasse.” But there was no left or right, no way of identifying Westphalia Strasse; Volkssturm roadblocks were inexplicably set up across steep dunes of rubble. A haze of gray smoke rose toward the noonday sun. Instinct led Brigitte back to her familiar territory.
So inexorably did the present annul the past, so simply, so mercilessly did this present perpetuate itself, that no room was left for the anticipation of any other future. The linear direction of time was scrambled, the calendar lost its meaning, the everyday milestones of existence were gradually effaced. Of the past Brigitte retained nothing but a handful of images, devoid of substance, as implausible and yet tenacious as those of recurring dreams. Reality commenced this side of a frontier defined by glowing summer evenings which weren’t prewar, but already wartime, since He was dead. The sirens started howling after midnight … Brigitte got up without any fear. What was there to be afraid of, now that He had ceased to exist, He who may never have existed but in His letters and the wonderful slumber that came before reality? A spreading sound of hurried steps told of the tenants making for the shelters. “Order, order … !” The sirens stopped and an absolute hush fell, like the cradling of the world. Brigitte took the little suitcase containing His letters, underwear, and money, but instead of going downstairs she went up … Ascend, she thought; that’s what you should do, poor souls, ascend toward the stars, (ascend toward Him); the neighbors she tried to tell this to pushed roughly past her muttering Was? Was? What? What? She climbed the ladder to the roof and went to lean her back against a chimney. All the constellations were glittering at once, even the faint Northern Crown was clearly visible, and surrounding them, beyond them, the deep pure blue of celestial space, grander still for containing secret constellations that could be discerned only by the most powerful telescopes … And the dark earth, blossoming all of a sudden into an immense flashing star emitting rays, spears, scimitars, and fans of light. The whiteness wove a tissue of radiance around the city, around the entire planet: the planet in her wedding dress. A bright cupola rose above Brigitte’s rapt, thrown-back head. She wished for cricket song: the crickets sang. Trac-tac-tac, tractac-tac-tac, trrraac, their song grew louder, the crickets all died in a millionth of a second and a deafening buzz of elytrons blew the shredded sails of great maddened ships in every direction of the compass as they plied the rocking firmament. “Good God, great God, Lord God!” stammered Brigitte, alone at the apex of a city turned into a dark, petrified gulf (daughter of a social-democrat academic, she was not a believer, but since His death she thought she half believed, not in the words of the faith but in the inexpressible intuition the words tried vainly to express … ). A white-hot symphony of steel struck up. A thousand motors droned in the cold incandescent furnace of the sky. Brigitte glimpsed dull fragments and even a metal fuselage briefly captured in the searchlights: the fragments and fuselage got away … No light, however murderous, is a prison! At the foot of the electric beams garishly colored firebirds soared and fell in triangles of night … The thunders crashed. Was there a beginning? Did they all crash together? Was it a single bouquet of lightning bolts multiplying through space? The black prostrate city did not cry out, despite the continuous shaking of the ground and the unendurable flashing of yellow-and-gold bursts over by the freight yards. The cathedral spire glittered darkly like a piercing scream. Geysers of green water spurted from the disemboweled river, Brigitte could see them clearly. “My God, if only the bridge … Oh, surely there is no more bridge, no quays, no river … All the water sprites have faded into radiant death … Why weren’t you one of them, Brigitte!” Now black waves arose. The lightning struck closer, but strangely in the opposite direction, with long, crackling reverberations, but nothing was visible, over there lay White Queen Park, populated by bronze antelopes and musicians’ busts … From there, oppressive clouds of black yet sulfurous smoke twisted into the air, spreading as they rose. Brigitte breathed in warm air full of nauseous odors … The bouquets of this demented dawn broke apart, some falling to earth, crashing in dark fields. Holes appeared in the sky where the calm sand grains of constellations were insanely still. The Northern Crown was shining again. “Lord God, hear me! Let us all die, all of us, down to the last innocent babe in its loving mother’s arms!” So Brigitte prayed, rigid yet calm, her eyes still dazzled by the inhuman revelry of glimmers and flashes, now convulsing spasmodically, now abating, on the verge of expiring, and bursting back to life like a firebox short of fuel … The thundering symphony stopped all at once. Stray searchlights swiped the air with wounded wings and flickered out. The darkness spread in sto
ny waves over the gulf of the city, but clouds were crawling like wild beasts over the rail yards and the industrial district emitting dull roars and nauseating smells … Sirens proclaimed the all clear …
As Brigitte returned downstairs, she met Frau Hoffberger coming up — a courageous woman, widowed during the first war, who liked to talk. “So where on earth were you, Brigitte? I was horribly worried about you. But it wasn’t too bad, was it? Did you hear our artillery! Herr Flatt, who was in the other war with my late husband, says we were attacked by a hundred planes, and they were all shot down or chased away, it’s a marvelous victory and our city can be proud, Brigitte, what a headache I have, and Frau Sachs, she fainted away as soon as our big guns opened up! And she’d brought her poodle down with her, I do think pets should be absolutely forbidden in shelters, I mean, I know animals are also at risk and they’re family for some people, but there’s hygiene and morale to be considered … Oh well, it’s all blown over, I don’t mind telling you I’m relieved, they won’t be back in a hurry after the hiding we gave them. You’ll see tomorrow, I’m sure those fire-crackers of theirs did far more harm than noise” (Frau Hoffberger meant this the other way around), “Herr Flatt says the Americans are the most incompetent flyers, they get a search beam in their eyes and down they go … Herr Jochsl didn’t agree, he was so jumpy I had to tug him by the sleeve and tell him, discreetly, don’t go on like that, Herr Jochsl, someone might turn you in, of course I know what a patriot you are, but … He was teary eyed as a girl, and a veteran too! They say he’s a Social Democrat! The electricity’s out, by the way, but it’s sure to be fixed tomorrow. Oh dear, how am I going to get through my day tomorrow, I’ve lost at least two hours’ sleep …”
“Good night, Frau Hoffberger,” said Brigitte. “Go right to bed.” In her own room, Brigitte ran her hands over her face several times, as though to remove an invisible veil and firm up her shaky features … The candle burned in the middle of its porcelain flower. How many flowers would be needed for this night’s graves, how many flowers? One enormous flower of light and fire, and of calm, for the city, for us all, Lord! For the world! She opened the old iron-filigreed casket containing His letters, in chronological order and tied with a ribbon. Some of these missives, delivered by the military postal service, contained only expressions of love, but there were others — so overwhelming and she could hardly read them — which had arrived after the notice of His Death on the Field of Honor for Folk and Fatherland: there were also photostats of the official report and the divisional order of His citation, and a photo of His Iron Cross, all forwarded to the fiancée by the fiancé’s parents.
Moments overlap, time is no longer continuous, but it was sometime later — which is to say, after the death notice but before the first heavy bombardment — that an olive-green private on furlough turned up, a shy, grim-looking young man who would only identify himself as Günther. He placed a parcel on the table and said, “Here are His letters. I have read them, at His request. The whole of Germany should read them. Good day, Fraülein.” “But you can’t just leave!” cried Brigitte despairingly. The crumpled forage cap came off again.
He had a receding hairline, pale sparse eyebrows, the face of a young athlete recovering from an illness. Overcoming his embarrassment he began, “Pardon me, Fraülein, I only …”
“You were his friend?”
“Yes.”
“You know how it happened?”
“Yes.”
“I want to know everything. I have the right to know everything.”
Maybe he was measuring her strength, and the anxiety at the bottom of the little strength he saw. Frauenkind, a child-woman; there are also Männerkinder, child-men, you see them on the firing line, despite their fear, because combat and unknown horrors frighten them less than the idea of letting their weakness show; they make good soldiers and excellent corpses (but not very good wounded: they tend to weep and moan and their misery aggravates their pain … ). Brigitte understood that he was going to hurt her, badly, unsparingly, out of a kind of pitiless kindness. She begged him: “Go on, tell me, I’m not afraid of anything …”
“He didn’t suffer … He died at once. A dozen bullets, chest, belly … They were experienced marksmen, shooting at almost point-blank range …”
Chest, belly — carnal words, they lacked for Brigitte their full human density. “I’m glad,” she said, “that his face was spared …” And she saw he was going to hurt her again, but what more could there be?
“On his face there was nothing but great astonishment.”
Brigitte smiled, as though half released. The astonishment of ceasing to be, mystery and mystery’s end, she too wanted that. Unintelligible words broke in on her. “What? What did you say? I didn’t quite …”
“I said he was killed by our own men, he and the rest of his tank crew.”
“Our own men? What men?”
“The others!” the soldier said with hatred. “The killers. Oh yes. They exist. Maybe they have to … That tank crew was noted for its bad attitude, do you understand? Well, I didn’t understand, but I did afterward. They’d been sacrificed; they weren’t supposed to come back. But they did come back, that sometimes happens. So an elite squad shot them down between the lines …”
These words burned slowly and unforgettably into Brigitte’s mind. There was no astonishment.
“Fraülein, it’s even happened to generals …” “Yes, yes, I understand, and I am very grateful you told me the truth … The truth …” Our own men, the others, the killers …
* * *
Time is in shreds and the soldier’s letters were in shreds. Brigitte could reread only some torn fragments.
“ … We were working back through villages burned out during the retreat. As though the land had been killed off. A few people were still living in cellars, they were afraid of us and kept their raped women hidden, but sometimes they’d come out and scrounge for food; and creatures who once were women were still offering themselves. S said we ought to put them out of their misery, but he threw them some bread … The bread fell into the mud, where they scrabbled for it. A desert is what we have made — that may not be the truth, but that’s what I saw. M explained the strategy behind the retreat. He’s the only one who thinks and speaks; he tells us that next we’re going to beat America, now that the Führer’s goals have been met in Russia … And how are we going to beat America, I ask? He’s counting on secret weapons, scientific warfare. He talks about the stratosphere without knowing what it is — as though it were some sort of magical immensity set aside for the most devastating weapons. He’s obstinate and brave, with an unformed intelligence inside a rather noble skull. No experience upsets him. The Führer knows what he’s doing, and thus our defeats become transmuted into brilliant feints. M is aware of my ‘doubts’ and said to me: I hope you will be killed for the Fatherland because I respect you.
“ … Once my tank ran over some living men. They were hiding under the snow, lying in wait for us perhaps, the machine swerved as it accelerated and they screamed like mice being crushed. Our treads were clogged with bleeding flesh and we left a red trail on the snow. I had to see it all, since I’m the observer. I’ve seen them finish off wounded men — our men — for lack of stretchers to take them away. The important thing was that they shouldn’t be able to disclose anything about our units’ movements. In any case, that’s how M explained it, approving orders he deems harsh but wise. ‘War,’ he said, ‘lifts man above himself.’ ‘Would you like such an end for yourself?’ I asked. ‘And why not,’ he replied, ‘better than falling into the hands of Jews and Jew lovers … ’ He means it too. I respect him; I think I hate him. I’ve seen prisoners lined up to be shot one by one by a Feldwebel because they wouldn’t tell what they could not know about enemy plans. Some of them got down on their knees and talked, making things up. M said laughing: ‘We’ll liquidate these liars a little later … ’ He loves to remind us that the Russians never signed the Geneva con
vention regarding POWs, too bad for them. Then what about our prisoners? M has an answer for that too: I’ve no pity to waste on cowards, I have pity only for the unlucky ones, but they must face up to the law of nature: Vae victis! The powerful races will only triumph by accomplishing nature’s law. His logic is seamless, like a paranoiac’s.