“Kamerad,” a weak, gasping voice intones, scarcely above a whisper, “ein bisschen Wasser?” He looks at the quivering man holding in his stinking entrails, sitting against the wall, and he meets his gaze for a moment, and in his eyes he sees the wan and grimacing face of Fitzpatrick all those days ago at the church; in his eyes he sees the man, the boy, who possibly killed Cooley; in his eyes he sees the mirror of his own fear, his own resignation, his own desire to just quit it all and yet frightful of the void, of eternity all about the cracked and tottering precipice on which he sits.
“Ein wenig Wasser, Kamerad? Eine … eine Zigarette?” A wan smile. He raises his pistol and shoots the wounded German soldier in the forehead, the sharp crack of his pistol resounding off the walls, the flash of its muzzle flaring into a moment’s focus the destruction strewn about. The soldier’s head slides sideways, eyes still open, a trickle of blood running down from the perfectly round hole. Most of his blood, it appears, is in his lap and soaking into the thirsty earth of the cellar floor.
“All dead here,” he says, turning to face Sergeant Stringer. Stringer looks impassive, his face stern, and he rigidly holds his submachine gun against his chest. “Let’s move out.” Up the stairs they go and they exit the way they came in; upon exiting, Jim tells Stringer to get the tank, and any other tank that can be mustered, to raze the house to the ground with their turrets, to wreck it as a possible strongpoint, to entomb the dead in their cellar vault. He exits the house back into the garden, and as he does so he hears the clattery roll of a grenade on the concrete walkway behind him, yes the roll of a grenade his spinal column wordlessly knows, and he is about to dive, his muscles reacting with adrenal clarity to his spinal instinct; and the world goes white and becomes noise, noise so loud and all-encompassing white that it becomes silence itself, so sudden that it is eternal, ongoing like the dying of the crash of a gong; and he is airborne, and then there is darkness.
33
Ssssshhhhhh … Sssssshhhhhh … Skis gliding through soft drifts of snow. A slow-change of mountains cresting white over valleys bristling with pine and spruce and cedar, a storm-tossed sea slowed to stone in a snapshot instant of perception; liquid earth, the clay of creation, destruction, cremation. Lives inhabiting a single frame see only a frozen storm, a time-lapse moment of earth in action, an increment of its own changing definition, a molten sea to ageless eyes that oversee, if such eyes there be. Mountains crested by snowcaps, the whitecapped surf of great waves congealed into curds in the slowtime of experience.
Sssssshhhhhhh … Sssssshhhhhhhh … The waves roll in and roll out, and the lathery foam on the beach subsides into the slick wet sand; clumps of seaweed move this way and that in the slow, seething push-pull of the sea; and the waves of the sea are mountains, and the mountains are the sea, and the wind through the wheat makes a wave, the force seen only in its effect. A hundred thousand arms saluting in the air, a hundred thousand sheaves of wheat waving in the oratorical ranting wind, a harvest of souls: “Heil Hitler!” The wind through the wheat like a wave through water, a rippling of the elements like a fold through a rug, a tremor through earth. The mountains are boiling seas and the seas are chains of mountains, force running through the anger of the voice, the swing of the hammer, the pull of the trigger. The sieg heil rallies, the newsreels of marching goose-stepping Nazis, the banners snapping in the wind, the tatters of flame, the burning of books, of flags, of nations; conflagration, conflagnation, birth, death, the moving and shaking, the storms and volcanic fury and fire of history. Fascination: fascist nation. A jackbooted puppet of failure and envy and vengeance. We fight a small fool with a huge vendetta. Vendetta: fascisti. Il Duce! A rallying cry ending on the noose of the hanged fascist swinging from a tree in the neighbouring orchard. A marionette made and played by the theatre of conflict, creaking in the breeze this way and that way, head swollen and purple and blackening, eyes bugged out, tongue hanging limply from dry and cracked lips. Puppet of a greater puppet, ventriloquized by Hitler. At this, the breezy rippling of tent flaps become the rally at Nuremburg, thousands of arms waving, voices raving.
Far from this at home on an October morning. The trees are alight like candelabras, each leaf a flame burning yellow, orange, red in the slow, cold fire of autumn, to be consumed into a dry crinkled brown, holocaust of summer. Youth to the fire. Sunk in the mire. Situation most dire. Fire of time, mire of place, set in clay we live our days. Too many images, too many thoughts and few words to name them, to make them thoughts entire. And the waves roll in and the waves roll out, and he is bathed in his own sweat, and the waves roll in and the waves roll out and the waves are mountains and the mountains are waves, and he is nauseous swimming in the sheets, and the creased and rumpled sheets are waves, the waves of oily seas breaking over him as he lies on the beach, the tide coming in, the world shifting and turning and shifting and turning and redefining itself before he can interpret any freeze in its mutations. In a moment of clarity he notices that he is cold and he is sweaty and he needs a glass of water, if only he could say that he needs a glass of water, if only …
“It is okay, McFarlane, you will have your turn, you are in good hands now.” Leprenniere smiles at him from the shadows of the tent. “I will fix you up good as new! Then we can play cribbage, you can help me against Doc Allenby from the Strats, we have a bottle of scotch riding on this one, so you just hang in there, McFarlane, I need you.” That bushy moustache, that avuncular smile …
“Sir!”
Jim ignores the voice, running down the dusty lane with a section of men, bullets pelting about him. He makes it to his destination, a shallow Jerry trench alongside a hedge, abandoned, and the others leap in along with him.
“Okay, Charbonneau, you take out that Spandau with your PIAT. Everyone else, covering fire.”
“Sir!” yells the voice again, right in his ear. It is Charbonneau himself, pressed up against him in the trench, loading a bomb into the muzzle trough of the platoon PIAT. “You’re wounded in the arm!” Jim looks down at his arm as Charbonneau cocks the weapon and takes aim, the metal cone of the projectile sticking outward like an Industrial Age arrowhead, and the others fire into the basement window of the house with the machine gun sputtering away, and Charbonneau fires his PIAT, the projectile springing forth and hitting the corner of the window with a blast and a crash of masonry; and all this is distant, distant, as Jim feels a cold faintness about him, a cold faintness and a whitening, spots in front of his eyes like black holes in his consciousness as his blood pressure drops, blood soaking his khakis, and he clutches the hole, yes the hole in me my God you’ve been hit hope it’s not bad don’t pass out it doesn’t hurt but my, the blood—then the pain begins, a hot burning throbbing pain, a deep aching bone pain, then his breathing becomes shallow and rapid and he feels shock take over, a cold numbing distance from all about him.
He barks some more commands, but Corporal Hendrick will hear none of it, his lieutenant is down, is wounded and he has to get him out of here, and he helps him up and guides him, stunned, to a carrier. The carrier crew drives him back to the aid post, and dirty blood from a dozen men sloshes on the floor of the carrier like fetid water in a swaying bucket as they trundle over bumps and holes in the field outside the smoking ruins of the small hamlet, past a smoking Sherman tank and a burned-out German bunker, all this destruction. They lead him out of the carrier and he finds himself at the aid post, smoking a cigarette on the floor, propped up against the wall, Father Maitland delivering last rites to a man so badly burned he can scarcely be recognized, a tank crewman or a gunner or a downed airman perhaps; beside him is Private Tarnowicz, a Ukrainian and a fellow Sudburian, looking like raw hamburger all chopped up from a shell and sucking wetly air from a hole that was once a mouth based on its location; and on the other side is a captured German paratrooper muttering to himself in German, leg outstretched and bleeding through gauzy field dressings, shivering and muttering and sharing a cigarette
with another man beside him; and they sip water, and some others sip rum, he can smell the boozy waft of alcohol.
“Leutnant,” says the German wanly in the two-syllable German pronunciation of that rank, turning his head to him, buttressed against the wall, “Smoke?”
“Thank you,” Jim accepts in a dizzy half whisper, and he takes a long drag and hands it back to the wounded paratrooper, who nods a polite affirmative nod and has a drag and passes it to the wounded soldier beside him.
The medics bring in another, medics smeared in the blood of others, pigmented in the sap of friend and foe alike, a mingling of blood types; and this man has no legs, gauze and bandages wrapped around sickening bloody stumps, the man pallid, the man shivering, let him go before me for God’s sake thinks Jim, and he wants to be sick but he holds it in, yes holds it in and rocks against the wall, rocking, about to break, for the first time truly about to break, oh God just get me out of here now now now please, just get me out of here, and he looks to the right as Leprenniere pours sulfa powder into somebody’s wound, his face lined with concentration, saying little and doing a lot, humming as he does an old Quebec folksong, and Jim buries his head in his arms as he awaits his turn.
“Hey, Jim, hang in there!” That smile again, as he calmly resuscitates a wounded soldier with fresh blood, the plasma bag suspended from a pole, and Jim feels an unease creep over him, crawl over him, a terrible sinking feeling; he wants to reach out and shout to Leprenniere to get down but the words are caught in his throat—something is going to happen, he knows it, something is going to happen—and he shakes and he jitters and there is a great quaking of the earth as a fusillade of artillery bears down upon them, and the window blows in and the blood bag bursts, and Leprenniere is killed where he stands, shredded by shrapnel and glass, and Jim screams, why, why, oh why didn’t I tell him? Why? Why? You knew what was going to happen, you knew, you knew, you knew!
Shaking, twitching, muttering in the sheets.
A shell like a siren. A gate wrought of iron, streaked with rust the rot of iron, adorned at the handle with agate. No poor man’s home this is: but whose? Yes yes that’s it that mansion in The Glebe some magnate’s social magnet. Walked by it once. Spired, looming black behind manicured oaks like the House of Usher. Lumber tycoon methinks, lumber the lumbar of old Ottawa. A spine made of wood, eh? Supporting the head, the government. Wooden spine: blockhead. Built on the back of many a lumberjack. The logs bobbing down the river, vast floating rafts nudged by puffing tugboats. Hoo Hoo! Boozy waft in the air, though cleaner. Rubbing alcohol that is. Some poor bastard’s getting a needle. Needle and thread. Takes more than that to sew on the head. Lead. Dead. Buried: to the earth, fed. Dead! Dead! The finality of that word. Dead! Dead! He feels his heart pounding, feverish, feeding the delirium in which he swims bedbound, the trees waving in the breeze, ssssshhhhhh, ssssshhhhhh, the rustle of trees, too windy to swim shall we all head in?
Home at last! He stands in the bathroom of his childhood and turns the faucet and runs a bath. There is a basin of hot water for his disposal. He looks down at his uniform, his sweaty, stinking battledress worn for days and weeks on end. God, but the filth of me. He peels it off and pours into the tub the basin of hot water, and steps in, one leg and then the other, and lowers himself in. In the bathtub a wave, a circle of disturbed water radiating outward as he puts his hand underwater to scratch an itch in his thigh. The hot water pricks his skin like a thousand tiny needles undoing the damage done, threading the frayed ends of nerves back together, knitting skin ravaged and rubbed raw by a week in the stinking, grimy rags of his uniform. His skin is marbled, flushed red, suffused in the heat of the water with his blood, his blood contained in his body in its proper role as sustainer of life. His penis floats in its nest of hair like a deadhead timber protruding upward from the seaweed depths at an angle, terminating in a mash of wrinkled foreskin. He hugs his legs and cowers from the world—embowered in this copse of trees in a hole in the dying light of dusk amid the rumble of the guns, the ceaseless drumming rumble of the guns, the rubble from the guns, the crumble of buildings under the pounding of the guns, the guns beyond the hills; cowering in his hole, worrying on his fate amid the chlorophyllic freshness of the leafy emanations, contrasted with the sourness of his sweaty Gethsemenations, sharp and skunky, the stinking, clinging grime of his own fear as he hugs his legs and pulls himself tight—
Shifting machinescapes of moving parts: cogs, wheels, gears and pistons grumbling and churning and turning and whirring, wheels within gears within cogs, an infinitely detailed mechanoid monstrosity infernal in its workings, intricate and infinite in scope and scape and ongoing, encompassing and unfolding, a passing digestion through the churning vortices of machinery, a dizzying kaleidoscope of sight and sound folding in on itself and inescapable in its geometric permutations—
Crump! Crump! Tremors underneath. The lamps flicker. Where am I? I’m everywhere. Everywhen. My, I think I’m losing my mind … losing my mind. Mouth muttering the mad meanderings of his mind—Jesus it’s like a fever when I was a child when I was a child oh Mommy.
“Mommy? Mommy? It hurts, Mommy.”
“It’s alright pet, it’s alright.” Soft moist breath on the back of his neck. She wraps him in a maternal hug, enfolding him in placid sanctuary … the gentle timeless rocking of the chair, hushed calm rocking in the nightmare world of the unknown beyond, primal solace, sssssshhhhhh …
Hush little baby don’t say a word,
Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird,
Clinging to her nightgown, to the worn warm smell of sanctuary, soft whispery lullaby tones breathed over him in a wash of tender images that softly illuminate the darkness—
And if that mockingbird don’t sing,
Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring—
“I’m going to be sick,” he says weakly, thinly, in a tiny voice, mind hot and febrile, a halo around the bathroom light. Halo: Grandma said we all have guardian angels.
“It’s okay honey, it’s okay.” She pulls his hair up from his eyes, his sweaty matted hair, and she holds him as he leans weak over the toilet bowl, bonewhite hands on cold smooth porcelain enamel, and he burps a gurgly nauseous burp and he thinks it’s funny the way it sounded, BRRRRRP! And he feels the hot lurch of his stomach, the bubble of burning juices queasing, squeezing their way up, and he tastes and feels the hot burning sourness in his mouth, and he vomits into the bowl, belching all the while, stomach muscles tensing in painful contractions, tugging, tugging, and he heaves again, muscles seized and lungs deflated, and the world turns about him, and the room thumps with a pulse and spots form and dance in front of his eyes and the world goes small and his skin crawls and tingles in this distention of a moment as he heaves again in oxygen debt and past the very limits of his straining stomach muscles; a bilious yellow stream projects from his mouth, and he can’t yet catch his breath; it tugs, tugs, tugs, God the colonel’s gonna kill me I’m drunk about to be rebuked by the colonel oh God just kill me now and get it over with I should be shot at dawn or break rocks in the quarry for this, and Mother soothes with her hand his shoulder and ruffles again his sweaty hair now, and she says, “There now, there now it’s over, let’s get some water and some rest,” as the tenseness subsides, the world returning to its proper proportions, the vertigo ebbing, the swaying revolutions of the world about him slowing, his stomach settling, and he spits out little chunks and bits caught in his teeth, ridding his mouth of the pungent sour taste, Mother so soothing, so soft, like when she sat him in the chair in the basement and rubbed stinking heavy coal grease into his hair which made him smell like tar; sssshk sssshk went the comb, nits gritting against the teeth of the fine-toothed comb dragging backward along his scalp and furrowing the greasy mat of hair into waxy rows, ssshk ssshk, long and careful strokes scraping his scalp, a cool and satisfying feeling, though it hurt a little, though his hair was being pulled backward; he could see the
bluing of the clothes soaking in the laundry tub by the stairs, could smell the heavy creosote smell of tar-gelled hair, could feel its waxy weight upon his head, could still feel safe, safe, yes safe, safe, safe from the schoolyard taunts, the chanting of “You have li-ice! You have li-ice!” I got it from Tommy Bowden I know I did he’s the poor kid never bathed always wore old clothes his Daddy beat him yes that’s what they say, his Daddy got home from the mine and drank and beat him with his belt, he gave me lice, he probably works in the mine and comes home and drinks and beats his son now too, sssshk sssshk sssshk went the comb, and the heavy brownish grease made him smell of sunbeaten tarsweaty railway ties—walking along the tracks with a fishing rod slung over shoulder, the tarry smell of ties in the air; ear to the rail and he could feel the vibration of an approaching train telegraphing its presence through the conducive strands of metal, the chugging rumble of an approaching freight train—blustering black locomotive bearing down, reciprocating rods turning great iron wheels, a flash of sparks, stack unspooling thick sooty smoke into the sky. With each chug and piston turned there was spiritual release, fossil fulfillment, ancient fossil spirits released through the medium of the steam engine and its rhythmic chugging mantra. The smile and wave of the coveralled engineer from the cab as it roared by with its coaltender car in tow and piled high with coal, followed by the weighted rhythmic gallopy clatter of railcars, a hundred of them that time it seemed, the train shuddering the latticed beams of the trestle underneath it; boxcars closed and stuffed with goods or riding empty, both doors open, framing the passing scenery; flatcars stacked and bound with timbers or steel ‘I’ beams or newfangled farm machinery and Massey-Harris tractors; slag-heaping ore hoppers and oblong black gleaming oil tanker cars; slit-windowed and wood-panelled cattle cars packed with livestock and trailing their barnyard scents; followed by the caboose, a little house with chimney on screeching metal wheels. Impressed by the power of modern machinery, the sound of it, the weight and speed of it, the squealing of metal wheels on metal rails, the bucking of wheels from rail-length to rail-length, the roar and the tremor underfoot; yes, yes, I remember that, caught two sunfish after, too, caught two sunfish at the creek and threw them back, not good eating, too bony Dad said, not good eating but fun all the same to catch; the nibble-bent nudging of the rod, the tugging, the rush of excitement in pulling them in and holding them by their mouths and unhooking them, tiny teeth in rubbery maws picky on the fingers, slitted silvery fishgills fanning their red razor rows as they tried to wring oxygen from the air; tarsweaty hair creosoaked in grease, and his mother combed those lice out of his hair by the steel laundry tub with a black fine-toothed comb, and it went sssshk sssshk sssshk sssshk sssshk, gritting against and collecting the nits in his hair, the voice soothing, saying, “Now you’ll be clean, you’ll be lice-free, you can go back to school now, get these bad little bugs out of here where they don’t belong”; sssshk sssshk went the comb the razor on his face, harvesting whiskers, shaving behind the lines before the battle while the shells crumped harmlessy in the distance, muffled through the walls, the floor; savouring the razor’s scrape, a civilized cutting of weeds, a gardening of the self, a morale-boosting ablution, man rising from the animal within, from the overgrowth, oh God that feels good it does I feel like a gentleman now feel like sssshk sssshk the bullets shearing through the hedge all about and overhead as Schneider reached out to a stranger and died alone beside him clasped hand in hand ...
Beckoning War Page 27