The Extremaduran looked at me sullenly and said nothing. I thought it would be simpler if the shelling started. But it did not start.
The two in the leather coats and civilian caps came back over the ridge, walking together, and then down to the gap, walking downhill with that odd bent-kneed way of the two-legged animal coming down a steep slope. They turned up the gap as a tank came whirring and clanking down and moved to one side to let it pass.
The tanks had failed again that day, and the drivers coming down from the lines in their leather helmets, the tank turrets open now as they came into the shelter of the ridge, had the straight-ahead stare of football players who have been removed from a game for yellowness.
The two flat-faced men in the leather coats stood by us on the ridge to let the tank pass.
“Did you find the comrade you were looking for?” I asked the taller one of them in French.
“Yes, comrade. Thank you,” he said and looked me over very carefully.
“What does he say?” the Extremaduran asked.
“He says they found the comrade they were looking for,” I told him. The Extremaduran said nothing.
We had been all that morning in the place the middle-aged Frenchman had walked out of. We had been there in the dust, the smoke, the noise, the receiving of wounds, the death, the fear of death, the bravery, the cowardice, the insanity and failure of an unsuccessful attack. We had been there on that plowed field men could not cross and live. You dropped and lay flat; making a mound to shield your head; working your chin into the dirt; waiting for the order to go up that slope no man could go up and live.
We had been with those who lay there waiting for the tanks that did not come; waiting under the inrushing shriek and roaring crash of the shelling; the metal and the earth thrown like clods from a dirt fountain; and overhead the cracking, whispering fire like a curtain. We knew how those felt, waiting. They were as far forward as they could get. And men could not move further and live, when the order came to move ahead.
We had been there all morning in the place the middle-aged Frenchman had come walking away from. I understood how a man might suddenly, seeing clearly the stupidity of dying in an unsuccessful attack; or suddenly seeing it clearly, as you can see clearly and justly before you die; seeing its hopelessness, seeing its idiocy, seeing how it really was, simply get back and walk away from it as the Frenchman had done. He could walk out of it not from cowardice, but simply from seeing too clearly; knowing suddenly that he had to leave it; knowing there was no other thing to do.
The Frenchman had come walking out of the attack with great dignity and I understood him as a man. But, as a soldier, these other men who policed the battle had hunted him down, and the death he had walked away from had found him when he was just over the ridge, clear of the bullets and the shelling, and walking toward the river.
“And that,” the Extremaduran said to me, nodding toward the battle police.
“Is war,” I said. “In war, it is necessary to have discipline.”
“And to live under that sort of discipline we should die?”
“Without discipline everyone will die anyway.”
“There is one kind of discipline and another kind of discipline,” the Extremaduran said. “Listen to me. In February we were here where we are now and the Fascists attacked. They drove us from the hills that you Internationals tried to take today and that you could not take. We fell back to here; to this ridge. Internationals came up and took the line ahead of us.”
“I know that,” I said.
“But you do not know this,” he went on angrily. “There was a boy from my province who became frightened during the bombardment, and he shot himself in the hand so that he could leave the line because he was afraid.”
The other soldiers were all listening now. Several nodded.
“Such people have their wounds dressed and are returned at once to the line,” the Extremaduran went on. “It is just.”
“Yes,” I said. “That is as it should be.”
“That is as it should be,” said the Extremaduran. “But this boy shot himself so badly that the bone was all smashed and there surged up an infection and his hand was amputated.”
Several soldiers nodded.
“Go on, tell him the rest,” said one.
“It might be better not to speak of it,” said the cropped-headed, bristly-faced man who said he was in command.
“It is my duty to speak,” the Extremaduran said.
The one in command shrugged his shoulders. “I did not like it either,” he said. “Go on, then. But I do not like to hear it spoken of either.”
“This boy remained in the hospital in the valley since February,” the Extremaduran said. “Some of us have seen him in the hospital. All say he was well liked in the hospital and made himself as useful as a man with one hand can be useful. Never was he under arrest. Never was there anything to prepare him.”
The man in command handed me the cup of wine again without saying anything. They were all listening; as men who cannot read or write listen to a story.
“Yesterday, at the close of day, before we knew there was to be an attack. Yesterday, before the sun set, when we thought today was to be as any other day, they brought him up the trail in the gap there from the flat. We were cooking the evening meal and they brought him up. There were only four of them. Him, the boy Paco, those two you have just seen in the leather coats and the caps, and an officer from the Brigade. We saw the four of them climbing together up the gap, and we saw Paco’s hands were not tied, nor was he bound in any way.
“When we saw him we all crowded around and said, ‘Hello, Paco. How are you, Paco? How is everything, Paco, old boy, old Paco?’
“Then he said, ‘Everything’s all right. Everything is good except this’—and showed us the stump.
“Paco said, ‘That was a cowardly and foolish thing. I am sorry that I did that thing. But I try to be useful with one hand. I will do what I can with one hand for the Cause.’”
“Yes,” interrupted a soldier. “He said that. I heard him say that.”
“We spoke with him,” the Extremaduran said. “And he spoke with us. When such people with the leather coats and the pistols come it is always a bad omen in a war, as is the arrival of people with map cases and field glasses. Still we thought they had brought him for a visit, and all of us who had not been to the hospital were happy to see him, and as I say, it was the hour of the evening meal and the evening was clear and warm.”
“This wind only rose during the night,” a soldier said.
“Then,” the Extremaduran went on somberly, “one of them said to the officer in Spanish, ‘Where is the place?’
“‘Where is the place this Paco was wounded?’ asked the officer.”
“I answered him,” said the man in command. “I showed the place. It is a little further down than where you are.”
“Here is the place,” said a soldier. He pointed, and I could see it was the place. It showed clearly that it was the place.
“Then one of them led Paco by the arm to the place and held him there by the arm while the other spoke in Spanish. He spoke in Spanish, making many mistakes in the language. At first we wanted to laugh, and Paco started to smile. I could not understand all the speech, but it was that Paco must be punished as an example, in order that there would be no more self-inflicted wounds, and that all others would be punished in the same way.
“Then, while the one held Paco by the arm; Paco, looking very ashamed to be spoken of this way when he was already ashamed and sorry; the other took his pistol out and shot Paco in the back of the head without any word to Paco. Nor any word more.”
The soldiers all nodded.
“It was thus,” said one. “You can see the place. He fell with his mouth there. You can see it.”
I had seen the place clearly enough from where I lay.
“He had no warning and no chance to prepare himself,” the one in command said. “It was very brutal.”
“It is for this that I now hate Russians as well as all other foreigners,” said the Extremaduran. “We can give ourselves no illusions about foreigners. If you are a foreigner, I am sorry. But for myself, now, I can make no exceptions. You have eaten bread and drunk wine with us. Now I think you should go.”
“Do not speak in that way,” the man in command said to the Extremaduran. “It is necessary to be formal.”
“I think we had better go,” I said.
“You are not angry?” the man in command said. “You can stay in this shelter as long as you wish. Are you thirsty? Do you wish more wine?”
“Thank you very much,” I said. “I think we had better go.”
“You understand my hatred?” asked the Extremaduran.
“I understand your hatred,” I said.
“Good,” he said and put out his hand. “I do not refuse to shake hands. And that you, personally, have much luck.”
“Equally to you,” I said. “Personally, and as a Spaniard.”
I woke the one who took the pictures and we started down the ridge toward Brigade headquarters. The tanks were all coming back now and you could hardly hear yourself talk for the noise.
“Were you talking all that time?”
“Listening.”
“Hear anything interesting?”
“Plenty.”
“What do you want to do now?”
“Get back to Madrid.”
“We should see the General.”
“Yes,” I said. “We must.”
The General was coldly furious. He had been ordered to make the attack as a surprise with one brigade only, bringing everything up before daylight. It should have been made by at least a division. He had used three battalions and held one in reserve. The French tank commander had got drunk to be brave for the attack and finally was too drunk to function. He was to be shot when he sobered up,
The tanks had not come up in time and finally had refused to advance, and two of the battalions had failed to attain their objectives. The third had taken theirs, but it formed an untenable salient. The only real result had been a few prisoners, and these had been confided to the tank men to bring back and the tank men had killed them. The General had only failure to show, and they had killed his prisoners.
“What can I write on it?” I asked.
“Nothing that is not in the official communiqué. Have you any whisky in that long flask?”
“Yes.”
He took a drink and licked his lips carefully. He had once been a captain of Hungarian Hussars, and he had once captured a gold train in Siberia when he was a leader of irregular cavalry with the Red Army and held it all one winter when the thermometer went down to forty below zero. We were good friends and he loved whisky, and he is now dead.
“Get out of here now,” he said. “Have you transport?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get any pictures?”
“Some. The tanks.”
“The tanks,” he said bitterly. “The swine. The cowards. Watch out you don’t get killed,” he said. “You are supposed to be a writer.”
“I can’t write now.”
“Write it afterwards. You can write it all afterwards. And don’t get killed. Especially, don’t get killed. Now, get out of here.”
He could not take his own advice because he was killed two months later. But the oddest thing about that day was how marvelously the pictures we took of the tanks came out. On the screen they advanced over the hill irresistibly, mounting the crests like great ships, to crawl clanking on toward the illusion of victory we screened.
The nearest any man was to victory that day was probably the Frenchman who came, with his head held high, walking out of the battle. But his victory only lasted until he had walked half-way down the ridge. We saw him lying stretched out there on the slope of the ridge, still wearing his blanket, as we came walking down the cut to get into the staff car that would take us to Madrid.
Three Shots
[Ed. Note: this story originally published in italics]
Nick was undressing in the tent. He saw the shadows of his father and Uncle George cast by the fire on the canvas wall. He felt very uncomfortable and ashamed and undressed as fast as he could, piling his clothes neatly. He was ashamed because undressing reminded him of the night before. He had kept it out of his mind all day.
His father and uncle had gone off across the lake after supper to fish with a jacklight. Before they shoved the boat out his father told him that if any emergency came up while they were gone he was to fire three shots with the rifle and they would come right back. Nick went back from the edge of the lake through the woods to the camp. He could hear the oars of the boat in the dark. His father was rowing and his uncle was sitting in the stern trolling. He had taken his seat with his rod ready when his father shoved the boat out. Nick listened to them on the lake until he could no longer hear the oars.
Walking back through the woods Nick began to be frightened. He was always a little frightened of the woods at night. He opened the flap of the tent and undressed and lay very quietly between the blankets in the dark. The fire was burned down to a bed of coals outside. Nick lay still and tried to go to sleep. There was no noise anywhere. Nick felt if he could only hear a fox bark or an owl or anything he would be all right. He was not afraid of anything definite as yet. But he was getting very afraid. Then suddenly he was afraid of dying. Just a few weeks before at home, in church, they had sung a hymn, “Someday the silver cord will break.” While they were singing the hymn Nick had realized that someday he must die. It made him feel quite sick. It was the first time he had ever realized that he himself would have to die sometime.
That night he sat out in the hall under the night light trying to read Robinson Crusoe to keep his mind off the fact that someday the silver cord must break. The nurse found him there and threatened to tell his father on him if he did not go to bed. He went in to bed and as soon as the nurse was in her room came out again and read under the hall light until morning.
Last night in the tent he had had the same fear. He never had it except at night. It was more a realization than a fear at first. But it was always on the edge of fear and became fear very quickly when it started. As soon as he began to be really frightened he took the rifle and poked the muzzle out the front of the tent and shot three times. The rifle kicked badly. He heard the shots rip off through the trees. As soon as he had fired the shots it was all right.
He lay down to wait for his father’s return and was asleep before his father and uncle had put out their jacklight on the other side of the lake.
“Damn that kid,” Uncle George said as they rowed back. “What did you tell him to call us in for? He’s probably got the heebie-jeebies about something.”
Uncle George was an enthusiastic fisherman and his father’s younger brother.
“Oh, well. He’s pretty small,” his father said.
“That’s no reason to bring him into the woods with us.”
“I know he’s an awful coward,” his father said, “but we’re all yellow at that age.”
“I can’t stand him,” George said. “He’s such an awful liar.”
“Oh, well, forget it. You’ll get plenty of fishing anyway.”
They came into the tent and Uncle George shone his flashlight into Nick’s eyes.
“What was it, Nickie?” said his father. Nick sat up in bed.
“It sounded like a cross between a fox and a wolf and it was fooling around the tent,” Nick said. “It was a little like a fox but more like a wolf.” He had learned the phrase “cross between” that same day from his u
ncle.
“He probably heard a screech owl,” Uncle George said.
In the morning his father found two big basswood trees that leaned across each other so that they rubbed together in the wind.
“Do you think that was what it was, Nick?” his father asked.
“Maybe,” Nick said. He didn’t want to think about it.
“You don’t want to ever be frightened in the woods, Nick. There is nothing that can hurt you.”
Short Stories Page 57