Conceived in Liberty

by Howard Fast

  “You’ll come?” Ely asked the Jew.

  “I’ll come,” I said. “Christ, I’ll come, Ely.”

  We took clothes wherever we could find them. Charley’s woman gave a blanket, a petticoat. She lay in bed half-naked, clinging close to him. She called me over.

  “If he comes to his senses—plead him to take back the curse.”

  “There’s no curse,” Ely said uncertainly.

  We picked up Clark, the three of us. Ely, myself, and the Jew. He was skin and bones and he couldn’t have weighed more than ninety or a hundred pounds, but he was more than enough for us. We could barely hold his weight.

  We went outside and tried to go through the snow. There was a sleet blowing; it was like moving through a morass that sucked in our legs. Sometimes we couldn’t move, had to stand still waiting for our bodies to gather the strength to go on. I tried to picture Ely going through this for two miles, to the commissary and back. Coming back empty-handed. Now going out with us again. What is it in Ely? I look at him sometimes, and try to understand. Where is the strength? All of us are thin, but Ely is thinner. Our feet are wretched, but Ely’s feet are stumps of mangled flesh. Yet Ely walks without showing the pain. When there is work to be done, Ely does it. When a strong man is needed, Ely draws strength from somewhere. Yet he isn’t like Jacob. Jacob is fire, but Ely is spirit. Jacob is hate, but Ely is love. I think, sometimes, that when this is over, Ely will endure. Jacob will burn out, but Ely will endure.

  It is about three-quarters of a mile to the hospital, around the shoulder of the hill and down into the valley. Where we stand now, on the top of the hill, we are unprotected, open to every blast of wind that crosses the countryside. I look back and see the dugouts as heaps of snow. No life. Even the smoke is torn from the chimneys and dissipated. I think of how it would be if the British attacked us now, marched from Philadelphia and walked into our dugouts. No one to stop them or challenge them, only half-naked beggars who would sacrifice pride and honour for a bowl of stew. There would be no shots fired. We would be fed. Then we would go back home.

  I look down the white slope, half-imagine it. Why don’t they come and make an end?

  We went on slowly. It was on to late afternoon now, growing dark already. I kept my head down, but Ely led us; and whenever I glanced at him, his head was up, seeking the way. The Jew was a white, inscrutable figure. I had a feeling that I was walking into darkness—made up of white snow, buried deep in white snow. A sense of lightness overcame me, and I no longer felt my feet or the weight of Vandeer.

  We stopped once again, taking strength. Across the road, on the slope of Mount Joy, I saw a sentry. He stood in a lunette, a white cannon showing its head beside him. He stood without moving.

  “A short way,” Ely said.

  We pushed up the winding path that led to the hospital. It was a long log building. The sentry by the door scarcely glanced at us. I guess he was used to parties carrying men.

  Ely pounded at the door. An officer opened it, a tall, shaven man who wore epaulettes. I didn’t know him.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “We’re of a Pennsylvania brigade. We have a sick man.”

  “You’ve a doctor there, haven’t you?”

  “You know damn well we haven’t!” I cried.

  “Use a little respect when you speak, sir—or that tongue’ll be whipped out of you.”

  “You can go to hell,” I said. “By God, you can go to hell, mister!”

  “Take no offense,” Ely begged him. “We’re half-starved We’re not fit to walk.”

  I could see the officer calculating how far he could go with us. Lately, they were beginning to wonder about the half-beasts they led.

  There had been no parades, just a few inspections by lieutenants and captains, and long days between inspections. A sentry on a hill, huddled over his musket, wrapped in all the clothes his comrades could spare him. They were beginning to have strange doubts when they saw us come out of our holes, like beasts. Only a sense of fear of the greater cold outside kept the beasts together. That and their weakness; their weakness made them afraid of the great distances between this place and their homes. But they had their guns. If they turned the guns on the officers and went off together, that would be the end of it.

  He measured us, saw we were unarmed. “The hospital’s full,” he said. “No beds are left. Try Varnum’s hospital at the redoubt.” Varnum’s hospital was a good mile away.

  Ely said nothing; the breath came in thin steam from between his lips. The Jew said, in his curious Amsterdam Dutch: “Give a comrade a place to die. We gave our enemies that. Put a little warm food between his lips.”

  The officer didn’t understand Dutch. “Speak English,” he snapped. “The army’s too full of your kind.”

  “We can’t walk a mile to the redoubt,” I pleaded, hating myself for pleading. “We can’t walk that far——”

  The two sentries were looking on, dulled by cold, their beards full of the froth of their breath. I wondered whether they would make any move; I wondered how long it would be before each of us in turn came there, like Clark. Clark was groaning now, talking. His words didn’t make sense.

  “We can’t walk a mile now,” I said. “We can’t walk that far.”

  “Give him space on your floor,” Ely said. “Give him six feet of your floor. The man’ll freeze to death if you keep him here.”

  “Six feet on a gibbet would do the lot of you.” He was a New York City man—or English-born; he had the whining, rising inflection.

  “We’re going in,” Ely said. I caught Ely’s eyes; I had a rush of sickening fear. I knew that when anger came on Ely, it would destroy him and whoever stood in his way.

  I cried: “Ely, damn the swine, and we’ll go to the redoubt!”

  Ely started forward, bearing Vandeer and the two of us with him. I tried to hold back. The officer wore a sword, and his hand was on the hilt now.

  Then a little man pushed the officer aside, crowded him out of the doorway. The little man wore a long grey apron, splattered with blood. He wore spectacles, and he was clean-shaven, his thin hair gathered in a neat bun at the back of his head. He had a long, thin nose and remarkably full red lips.

  “What’s this?” he demanded. “A sick man out there, Murgot?”

  “The hospital’s full.”

  “You’ll keep your God-damn nose out of my hospital. Bring him in.”

  I could see the officer trying to face down the little man. The doctor ignored him, turned his back and walked into the hospital. We carried Vandeer in. The place was a log cabin, thirty feet long at the most, but there must have been more than a hundred men in it. They lay close together on beds built the length of the place.

  Some of them slept; most of them moved restlessly, the place was cold. There was a continual groaning; after a while, you ignored that.

  “We’re a little crowded,” the doctor said briskly. “They come and go. About even. We’re no warmer here than good mother earth.” He led us to a tiny place in the back, partitioned off, and he motioned for us to lay Vandeer down on the bed. We put him down and unwrapped his coverings. There was a small iron heater there. We crowded close to it.

  “Filth—my God, it’s a wonder to me there’s any of you left. Filth, filth—why don’t you shave off those beards? Let’s have a look at him. Tell me about it.”

  Ely told him—slow, hard words as he brought the scene back to mind.

  “I know—I know,” the doctor nodded, before Ely was through. “I know, men go mad. Well, there’s no cure I know of for that. What can you expect? It’s a wonder to me there’s a sane person left here. If there is, I’m the one. I won’t be that way long. What do you expect? Can I breathe reason back to him? Am I God?”

  The Jew said, softly: “You’re God. You see, all of us—we’re God. We have to believe that, in the God in us. The nearer we go to the beasts, the more we have to believe. I’ve starved before. I’ve seen two thousand me
n die as they walked to Siberia. You have to believe in man in God. You lose your fear of death; you fear only that the God will go out of you.”

  The doctor took off his spectacles, wiped them on his apron. “Who are you?” he asked the Jew—in Dutch.

  “He’s a Jew heathen out of Poland,” I said.

  “You read Spinoza?” the doctor asked him.

  “You’ll let him die?” He pointed to Clark.

  “All right—give me that basin.” Ely held it. The doctor bared Clark’s arm, whistled softly at the way the veins showed through. He took a piece of cloth and washed the arm as well as he could. He grumbled: “Can’t bathe—give me a hell hole of an icehouse and call it a hospital. I’m as filthy as you—nice on top, but just as filthy underneath.” He picked a tiny object from Vandeer’s arm. “See that? Lice—all of you lousy with them. What can you expect?”

  He took a lancet and opened a vein in Clark’s arm. Then he held out the arm, so that the blood drained into a basin slowly. The blood was dull red. The way it came, so slowly, made me think there was little enough left in Clark. The doctor asked Ely:

  “How long since he’s eaten?”

  “We haven’t eaten in three days—any of us.”

  The doctor whistled again.

  “He’s weak—he’ll bleed to death,” Ely said.

  “What can I do? I’m not God, in spite of your Jew here. I’ll bleed him until his reason comes back. He’d die anyway.”

  We stood there, grouped round the bed, fascinated by the blood welling out of Clark’s arm. Clark began to speak. He asked for Ely. Expertly, the doctor stopped the flow of blood. He pinched the vein together with his fingers, and then quickly bound it over with cloth.

  “I’m here, Clark,” Ely said.

  “Where’s Jacob?”

  “He was broke by yer words. He had no strength to come. We bore you to the hospital, Clark.”

  “Who came?”

  “Allen and the Jew.”

  “A great load. Allen’s loaded with the blackness of his sin. You’ll plead him to give up the wench, Ely?”

  Ely didn’t answer.

  “You’ll plead him, Ely!” Clark cried. “I’m a dying man.”

  Ely nodded. I said: “Clark—you’re putting a dreadful black curse on me. I love her.”

  “Promise me, Allen!”

  I shook my head.

  Then he closed his eyes. Ely turned away.

  “Let him sleep,” the doctor said. “Come with me.”

  We went into a room in back. He had a table there, a bed, and a heat box. The coals in it were dying. He put a wooden plate on the table, took out a pot with a few slices of cold meat in it.

  “We don’t have much——”

  I yearned toward the meat. Ely didn’t move. The Jew was smiling sadly.

  “That won’t feed the army,” Ely said.

  “Don’t be noble,” the doctor told him. “It will feed you.” Then he saw the Jew’s smile. “You can go to hell,” the doctor said. “You’re a filthy pack of beggars. It’s a wonder if the English lay hands on your filth to swing you from their gibbets.”

  We stood there.

  “Drink some rum,” he said. He poured three small cups. “Drink it, or by God, you’ll die before you reach your quarters.”

  The rum warmed us up, but made us dizzy. We stood there, sucking in the heat and the comfort of the rum burning our insides. The doctor was sitting on his chair, regarding us as if we were some curious specimens he had picked up.

  “You and me,” the doctor said, speaking to the Jew and in Dutch, “we’re the only civilized men here. You and me—in a land of savages, of filth and ignorance and superstition. They know one thing. They want to be free to cheat themselves and kill each other. They want to be free of the English. They want to be free to cheat and lie and hate. They want to be free to plunge a land into ignorance and misery. I’m here because I’m a fool. But why you?”

  The Jew shrugged.

  “You came with a great dream of a land for your kind.”

  “A land for all men.”

  “It’s big enough. But men are the same—here or Europe. If they win—and they won’t—but if they win, they’ll drive you out. You’re a Jew, a heathen.”

  “They won’t drive us out,” the Jew said softly. “We’ve come the length of the world——”

  “Driven!”

  “No—we’ve come here. We’ve come for a dream of a place for all men. This is a new world. The day of the old world is over. A long time—maybe two hundred, maybe three hundred years. But it will make the men who live in it. This is only the beginning. This army is nothing—nothing, only a dream. Do you understand? The army goes; the dream never goes. I stayed at the home of a man in Philadelphia who is making this revolution. His name’s Haym Solomon. He came out of Poland too. Poland was a school for us. Poland will go on fighting, but Poland won’t be free. A school. Here’s the land for the dream of God in man.”

  The doctor glanced at us. “Not a clean god. Come and talk again. Man can’t live by bread alone or without it. No bread. I won’t last the winter. If you make your land, tell your children about a man of science who wouldn’t believe. Damn lies!”

  We went back to Clark. He was still sleeping. His face, where it showed through his beard, was white as snow.

  “Will he live?” Ely asked.

  “How do I know?” the doctor snapped. Then: “It doesn’t make any difference. He won’t be far from any of you.”

  We take the clothes that Clark was wrapped in, two coats and a petticoat. I give a coat to Ely and the other to the Jew. I wrap the petticoat round my neck and face.

  We go out, and the cold hits us in the face, like knives ripping. Out of some forlorn curiosity, I spit on my sleeve. The others see me, and watch fascinated. I count, only once, and then the little balls of spittle snap with the frost.

  “My God,” Ely whispers.

  We have never known such cold as this. Ely has been to Canada. I have been, in winter, in the highlands of the upper Hudson. I have seen bitter cold weather, but never such cold as this. Neither has Ely. It is a cold that has come on the face of a planet stripped bare of all protection. It is a cold living and malignant. It is a cold that has become a force to destroy soul and body. In all the memory of men in America, there has never been such cold.

  We go on slowly, forcing our way through snow that is like dry sand. We move a step at a time, bringing one foot up to the place where the other has been. It is night already, no moon, but stars that glitter like bright jewels. The snow is a sheet of white—no sentries, no living thing except ourselves.

  To go back to the Pennsylvania dugouts, we must climb a hill—not very high, no more than two hundred feet. But the hill is the difference between life and death. The hill is a slope that leads to hell. We make a step, stumble, and slide back two. We roll over in the snow, feel it slide into every crevice of our clothes. We spit it out, and our lips freeze and go numb. We stand up and go on.

  I don’t think any more. My mind is gone. Only my body moves, and my body is a machine apart from me. It will go on until the spark of life in it flickers out.

  I turn round once, and the Jew is lying in the snow. He doesn’t move. Ely calls to me, but his words are lost in the rush of wind. I stand above them and watch Ely go back to the Jew. Suddenly, my mind comes alive. I think to myself, ten steps down, ten steps back. I keep thinking that—ten steps down and ten steps back. The words rush in my mind. I begin to cry, and the tears freeze on my lids.

  I go down to Ely. The Jew says: “Leave me. They’ll find me soon.”

  We help him up, and the three of us go on together. We go on into endless night and endless distance. I lose all conception of time and all conception of movement. Someone must be leading us.

  Then we are at the dugout. We drop on the floor. The Jew is senseless. Ely stares at the fire with wide, terrible eyes. I cry bitterly.

  Bess is rubbing my hands, kissi
ng me, trying to work the cold out of my limbs. She drags me toward the fire. I hear, as from far away, Ely telling Jacob of Clark.

  Then I am in bed, and Bess is trying to warm me. I know how little strength she has, and I wonder how she can work so desperately. But the cold won’t leave me. I tremble and my lips flutter. My lips are broken and bleeding.

  She says: “Rest—rest, my darling.”

  I feel for her warm face, for her hands, for her breast. I want life desperately. I cling to her for the sense of life.

  Then I sleep.

  I wake out of my dream, and speak with it: “Clark put a curse on me—he’s dying. I should drive you away. He made me promise.”

  Her cry of terror was the most terrible thing I had ever heard.

  I try to soothe her. I whisper: “No—I was dreaming.”

  But she lies there, awake, and I can feel her fear of the cold night, of being away from me.

  VI

  WE KEEP alive. Days pass, and days slide into one another, days and nights mingling to form a grey. But we keep alive. A strange knowledge comes to me, a knowledge of the strength in men. I can see how layer after layer of life may be taken from a man; take all the strength that is any man’s, and still there is strength underneath.

  So we keep alive. How many days pass, I don’t know. A new man is in the dugout. His name is Meyer Smith, and he was an innkeeper in Philadelphia once. The Jew is sick. We think of Moss Fuller. The Jew has the same racking cough.

  Ely said: “A bite of frost. His lungs are frozen. Maybe in the place he calls Siberia. When a man’s lungs are frozen, they never heal.”

  We sit round now trying not to notice that hacking, incessant cough. When we look at the Jew’s face, the bony features rising out of the shadow of his bunk, we are forced to think of something we don’t want to remember.

  “I call to mind Christ was a Jew,” Jacob said—strange words for Jacob.

  The Jew’s name is Aaron Levy. We are very tender with him. With us, it is different: we are born and bred to the land. But the Jew has come great, shadowy distances. The distances keep us away from him, and he is alone. His loneliness oppresses us. In his sleep, he talks in a language we don’t understand.