Unforgiving Years

by Victor Serge

  “It’s all gone,” Brigitte said. “And no wonder. Do I exist? Do you?”

  He hung his head.

  “I didn’t know where to go … Our company disbanded. The barracks burned down. Did you know they’re fighting very close to here? The city’s about to fall …”

  “Fall where?”

  Those peculiar queries — “Do I exist? Do you?” — had broken slowly through the man’s fatigue and he registered them. He peered around the room in desperation. There was no safety in here. Outside were the patrols, bent on making examples of all and sundry. What good are examples? It’s total madness. They’re all stark staring mad at the rear. I must get out. Spend the night in a hole somewhere. Tomorrow will be worse than yesterday. The death throes. All our tanks wiped out. “Please try to understand, Brigitte. I have to leave. Goodbye.”

  His hand was on the doorknob when a small noise grated the silence. The sound a famished rat would make, gnawing rabidly on a bone. He turned. Brigitte’s teeth were chattering. She was shaking from head to foot. “Don’t leave me again, I’ve waited so long. I always knew that you existed. I know your letters by heart. I’m scared.” He pulled her toward him. A heavy arm cradled Brigitte’s shoulders, warm breath enfolded her. “Shush, it’s all right. Nothing to be afraid of … We’ve no more to fear.” Ecstatically she repeated, “No more to fear …” The noise of a rat in a tomb stopped. “You’re warming me,” Brigitte murmured, “down to my soul. It’s my soul that was shivering …” She quieted, with both hands laid against the man’s chest and her cheek pressed against her hands. Like a fluid, fear seeped from her into him. Günther gazed without blinking at the tremulous flame of the candle. Such a tiny fire! Was it really fire at all? Real fire is what erupts from the ravaged earth in black, blinding spouts. It vaporizes the men, the trees, it reduces the machine to a mass of twisted metal …

  (It happened like this: the torpedo made a noise like a hurricane — earsplitting — the men threw themselves flat on the ground; a fat beetle was zigzagging down the road, its back striped green and gray … The torpedo must have blown up within a few yards of the car; by the time the men ran through a hot, buffeting wind-storm, puffs of steam were gathering above the chassis of the overturned machine … Not a trace left of windows or tires or the three officers they had just encountered. It was such a puzzle that a squad was detailed to sift through the ground, pounded into chalky dust … Death disappeared: no more danse macabre! The crater was a great oval wound gouged into the field, and no living thing subsisted in this earth cleansed by fire; not a worm, not a root, not a blade of grass … Günther tried to remember the general’s face: a tight-ass engineer in a high collar, insignia, splendid kepi … The troops feared him, for he was a stickler in hopeless situations. His gloveless hand was like a hook: the inexorable claw of a ghoul dragging whole regiments to counterattack in retreat, and on down to the underworld of butchered armies and peoples … The general’s remains would be sorely missed by the disciplined multitudes in limbo … Günther did not think all of this, but he relived it in the stillness of the moment. “There are no warriors anymore: only poor bastards facing exploding volcanoes. The cosmos has gone berserk … THIS CAN NEVER STOP …”)

  Strange to have a silent young woman against one’s chest as if asleep. And this carcass of a city, barer even than Warsaw, laid out dead in the first warmth of spring! He, Günther, was alive, living under the cold light of a huge, dark, sulfurous star: the sun of destruction.

  “Talk to me,” whispered Brigitte cajolingly. “You’re alive.”

  “Apparently,” he snickered to himself. Wasn’t the calm night going to explode? If it didn’t explode, it wouldn’t make sense.

  “You’re real. You’re not a hallucination, are you? Sometimes I thought I was going mad.”

  He answered, lying eagerly, “No, I’m not a hallucination,” because not one of those seconds was really real to him. What double of himself was speaking?

  “Brigitte. I feel great tenderness for you.”

  “I know. Tell me again.”

  He could not say the words again. He could not make a move or the spell would be broken. Indestructible, this immobility, more joyful perhaps than fearful. But NOTHING IS INDESTRUCTIBLE, EVERYTHING WILL BE DESTROYED. Günther asked, “Do you feel better now?”

  “I feel fine.”

  He was thinking: I’m nearly as disoriented as this young woman, me, the strong, rational one. Strong, what a laughable idea. You wish you were made of bronze, cast by Krupp! You end up foolishly believing that you are, in spite of your melting innards and your foggy brain …

  “Brigitte, you ought to rest.”

  “I’m yours, don’t you see, why do you talk to me like a stranger?”

  The young woman’s fragility eventually communicated to him an animal thirst with which he was all too familiar. All soldiers know it. Slacking off or overworked, their sole virtues are those of beasts. Where was it? A shapely pair of female legs, frozen in an upside-down dance step, tipped with high-heeled patent pumps, poking out from beneath a fall of rocks; they were only just beginning to turn blue. The gang made dirty jokes. It occurred to me that this would make a good photograph to hang beside the one of the carbonized head, still imperiously erect, that I saw on a burned-out turret. The diptych could be called A Match Made in Heaven. He felt hot, thirsty, he wanted the woman, he wanted sleep more than anything. I really should kill you, out of kindness. The only forgivable murder, and the hardest to commit. Brigitte, do you know that the odious time of rape has arrived? All rutting armies fall upon all women cornered in vacated cities, roofless barns, woods sheared by fire. The peasant women of Poland, Russia, or Serbia know it, they run from the armed man, but only a little way; then they stop, turned in on themselves, with watchful, frightened eyes, and quickly lift the skirts under which they keep only their bodies; they glance about for the couch of dead leaves, grass, straw, stones, any good place to get it over with quickly, to pay for their lives. They know all about the blood-thirsty brutes who strangle or eviscerate you afterward — the young women talk about it when they sit up late, after reading love letters from the front to each other; they also know that the stranglers and slashers are a minority, whereas plenty of soldiers reward you with a cigarette, a piece of chocolate, a tin of Spam, a few small coins, a stolen trinket if you’re lucky. Most don’t give a woman anything, but sneer contemptuously when they’re through, or cringe in sudden, stupid shame. And it may be that some of those who kill do it to kill the shame. Do you suppose, poor mad Brigitte, that I’m any different from the others? Elementarily, we’re all the same. And you’re like every other female caught up in the banality of destruction. And the victors who will be storming in next week, if not before, they’re the same. They will shove your legs open and fall roughly on top of you. A resurgence of our primate ancestors. Wouldn’t I truly be doing better if I put my hands around your neck and squeezed a little, a little harder, like this? Next I could kill myself, and you would have delivered me … Not that way, the world will deal with me, I want to see it through, the strong one. Usually, you don’t see anything or know anything or feel anything … Enough.

  Brigitte said, “It feels so good, your hands on my throat … Hold tighter.”

  The man’s grip slackened. The only thing in the world I care for now is sleep, a deep sleep in warm grass under a white apple tree. Postcard poetry. What am I doing? What if she’s sick, as if it mattered? She’s insane. Shock, schizophrenia? Whole continents have gone insane, civilization is a form of schizophrenia. The sky will blow up and there’ll be nothing left of us, or of this absurd room at the top of a ladder surrounded by the corpses of houses, or of this candle watching over our corpses. The female saints were like you, Brigitte, and they martyred those saints, such was the imperial law of the times. Latin civilization. Cicero. I’ve got to make my brain shut up. We’ll be happy like animals in a hole, ten minutes before they’re smoked out or crushed to death … War is an
incredible carnage of innocent creatures … Blessed are the simple-minded, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven … Goddammit! How to make my brain shut up? We are still alive, tomorrow it’ll all be over. Nothing will be over …

  “I’m thirsty, Brigitte.”

  “There’s some disinfected water.”

  She poured cloudy liquid into a monogrammed glass. “Are those your initials?” “Yes,” she said, though they were N’s intertwined below a crown … From force of habit, he placed his loaded pistol and his dagger within instant, instinctive reach of his hand, and adjusted the elastic bandage around the scar on his left calf. His underwear was dirty and he removed it all, happy to go naked to bed, something he had not done for weeks. A man is freer in the nude, he enjoys the relief of disarming himself. To take off a filthy uniform is to strip oneself of power and obedience, to cease being a dangerous quasi-robot harassed by fears and cunning, the petty fear of hassles and the overwhelming fear of … Distractedly, he watched Brigitte put on a silky white nightgown. The cool touch of the silk exhilarated him more than that of the long, feeble body, fevered and yet cold, that sought refuge against his. The flesh was pitiful, the silk, luxurious. Rats began or resumed their noisy business beneath the floorboards. Millions of rats proliferate among these ruins. Their kind will outlive ours. Günther, on his back, let Brigitte snuggle up with her head on his shoulder. She had put on perfume … The silk, the skin, the verbena tea, the rats, the pungency of the snuffed candle, the glint of night through the crack in the wall that ran up to a triangular hole beneath the ceiling … He wanted to desire this woman but he felt leaden, paralyzed by the weight of a hopeless inertia. In the present world, the only natural coupling is a rape in the barn of some smoldering farm. That skinny black-haired Slovene, the way she’d hidden under a pile of old sacks, what a childish ploy! She opened her mouth to scream, but didn’t because others were already screaming below us … But I hardly looked like a murderer, I was afraid of myself, I only wanted to feel myself alive, quench my thirst, and escape the inner presence of death, I was afraid of hurting the lass … He brushed Brigitte’s nipples with his fingers. Her breasts were wrinkled and baggy, like the Slovene’s, like the teats of wandering bitches … Packs of stray dogs run wild through the wrecks of cities, and idiots in armbands are sent out to shoot them … The bitches are quick to recognize the armbands, and bolt at full speed, like the children of the Jews, whenever they see one … The idiots in armbands also shoot the children of the Jews …

  A crackling volley of small-arms fire dwindled into the distance. The night patrols were shooting down men-dogs-bitches-rats.

  And Günther completely remembered the Brigitte to whom he had brought the letters, in a prosperous town: the drive lined with chestnut trees, the lawn before the house, the mullioned casements fringed with creeper, the piano, the young woman with the tentative smile, her lightness among things, the Brigitte whom he had recognized, whom he already knew from his friend’s confidences. “I’m here for one who is no longer anywhere, Brigitte …” And so he was restored to innocence, virility, and the desire for a tender grind.

  Light stole into the room. He was dressed by the time Brigitte opened her eyes, shivering.

  “I was cold suddenly … You’re leaving already?”

  Furtively, he touched her forehead with his lips.

  “I’ll be back. Go back to sleep.”

  “Oh yes, I’ll go back to sleep. Make sure the door’s closed. Come back.”

  Hours later, Brigitte no longer knew whether she’d lived or dreamed that night. Still she thought, “Maybe I’m going to have his child …”

  * * *

  Franz Minus-Two had a ground-floor room which had acquired a marked resemblance to the corner of a stable. It was handy, though, for reaching the air-raid cellar in under a minute. To get in and out he had to negotiate the Schulzes’ pigsty, the whole family snoring in a heap. He roughly prodded his “Baltic mare,” Ilse by name. “Help me change my clothes, precious …” They weren’t hampered by the dark, you get used to it, like moles … He put on an overcoat and a workingman’s cloth cap, picked up the flashlight he used stintingly (no more spare batteries), but left the pistol: you could have your throat cut for one of those … “I’m off for a healthy breath of air, all right, sausage?” “Yes, Franz, and don’t forget your scarf …” Her solicitude pleased him; he rummaged his good hand through Ilse’s short, untidy hair by way of a caress: good-quality horsehair, that. He levered himself ponderously over the windowsill. No need to keep the Schulzes informed of his lunar wanderings. The “Baltic mare” slumped back into sleep.

  “We’ve both been lucky,” Franz thought to himself. “Me for picking her up, she for being on my way.” Had it not been for him, Ilse would now be on the roads of Mecklenburg or someplace among the scum of the drifting crowds, little more than a straw mattress open to panicked soldiers caught between disorderly retreat and desertion, emaciated foreign workers, disreputable marauders; or perhaps the SS, rating her on sight as “clap-ridden and incurably demoralized,” would have put her out of her misery for good, so as to improve by a millionth the chances of the Race, already shelled to smithereens! That’s how they are, the guys in the last Special Security squads with their sharp uniforms, spit and polish as if the days of parades were not over, equipped with orders, motorbikes, revolvers, syringes, ideology, and inflexibility, in short admirable men! (Some of the more far-sighted ones sneaked into civvies, had themselves listed as casualties of the previous night’s skirmish, and resurfaced miles away, bearing the papers of an ordinary citizen; the perfectionists among them could even produce from their right pocket a release form stamped Teufelbronn Work and Protection Camp … ) Ilse’s story was enough to break your heart, at a time, that is, when hearts were a run-of-the-mill, breakable commodity — not made of stone blocks designed to withstand missiles and high temperatures. 1. A husband gloriously buried at Mozdok, below the Caucasian peaks. 2. An ungrateful lover, a French prisoner who ran away — after all they did to keep him fed! 3. The parents, the last horse, and the two toddlers lost between the Oder and the Elbe, behind Russian lines. 4. The experience of serving in an auxiliary service not recognized in infantry regulations … All the tears in her body having dried up long ago by the fireless bivouacs of a motorized company without motors, Ilse maintained the sturdy taciturnity of a mare, the hygiene of a peasant woman inured to the icy waters of the SpirdingSee, the silence taught by the pine forests, and the fatalism dinned into Mazurian serfs by the thirteenth-century sword-bearers — a submission to destiny wisely maintained, nearer our times, on the baron’s potato acres. A good girl, was she more stupid than stolid, or more stolid than stupid? “Blockhead, Jenny-ass!” jeered Franz when she was clumsy in helping him to dress. An expression of sly, or perhaps merely fearful, subservience would come over Ilse’s round, ruddy face but she never felt offended, perhaps finding in the man’s gruff ways some confirmation of her right as a woman. This had initially been a problem for Minus-Two: How can I ever mount a female with these stumps and prostheses? And which of them’d want me, apart from a few specialized old nags? Ilse, submitting, was all motherly tenderness and he even suspected the woman’s eyes were moist. “Cut it out!” he spat. “Don’t you get mawkish with me, or you’ll be feeling the back of my hand like you won’t forget in a hurry!” She, who spoke so rarely, answered, “Oh no, no pity for you!” (She’d used the word pity … “If not, why not?” wondered the cripple, exasperated.)

  Franz set off down Foundling Strasse, that is, down a track tamped into the rough brick dust. There was no moon, and the stars were overrun by clouds which moved forward like invaders across a map. The earth has a phosphorescence all its own. The crutch, the cane, and the iron tip of the prosthesis added nothing to the scattered sounds of solitude. Stones fell of their own accord. The nocturnal rustlings of the city were like those of a forest: they filled the silence with a minute tremor that was the very substance of silence. The
vibration of a spring night in the Black Forest orchestrates the beating of wings, the cries of animals seeking one another out or simply expressing their joy to be alive, the pricking of deer hooves along paths known only to them, the fall of dead branches, the hum of the wind … And there can be no doubt that the respiration of leaves, the radiance of the stars, the thrust of roots through the soil, the rising saps must chime in with subtle, essential descants on this enchanted frequency. What’s got into you, Minus-Two, dreaming of the Black Forest as you haul yourself, gasping, over the rubble? Fairly stinks around here, sure enough there’s a family of refugees asleep in that cavity underneath, if you can call it sleeping, rotting’s more like it … An arresting clash of odors made him stop and sniff the air. He was in a bulldozed clearing where the Fraüleins Hahn-Simmelholz had once presided over their drugstore, the Scented Herb. One of these ladies might still be alive, if she could live without her sister, her Siamese cats, her potted plants, her window display; the other was last seen as a pool of guts caramelized by acids, essences, medicinal potions, and Lord knows what else. All of the esoteric liquids stored in the basement had run or burned or melted, hissing and fizzing through everything in their path, including Fraülein Mitzi’s plump chaste tummy. Around the tidied rubble (for it had happened in the far-off days when there were still enough sweepers to meet the demand, who were even paid a meager wage) blew cloying, faintly heady fumes. The old biddies had kept quite a respectable stock hidden under their hats, “to save for a rainy day, hooray” tootled Franz cruelly, and he gave a laugh, balanced on a chaotic tumulus that rose seven feet above this extravagant landscape. He laughed because he was remembering a lecture on the redistribution of stocks in wartime, which he’d heard at his advanced course in Work Reinsertion Training for the Maimed in Action. This was a compulsory sprint through economic geopolitics or geopolitical economics, otherwise known as the art of selling a moon of green cheese by promising world domination to a bunch of cripples at the very moment when our invincible army, instead of taking Suez, was taking it on the chin at El Alamein … Behold the theory: