by Otto Penzler
The enlisted men call him “Papa.”
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
The kraut prisoner was no enlisted man. He was an officer. Stiff-necked son of a bitch. Deutschland über alles. Arrogant pup. Übermensch.
No, the German will not reveal anything. He will answer none of their questions. They can all go to hell. That’s what the German officer says. They can all get f——.
Papa shakes a fist in the kraut’s face. Papa says, “You’re going to talk and tell us every damned thing we want to know or I’ll kill you, you Nazi son of a bitch.”
The German officer does not change expression. He looks bored. What he says is: “You are not going to kill me, old man. You do not have the courage. You are hindered by a decadent morality and ethical code. You come from a race of mongrelized degenerates and cowards. You abide by the foolishness of the Geneva Convention. I am an unarmed prisoner of war. You will do nothing to me.”
Later, he would boastfully write about this incident to the soft-spoken, courtly gentlemen who published his books. He said to the German officer, “What a mistake you made, brother.”
And then I shot that smug prick. I just shot him before anyone could tell me I shouldn’t. I let him have three in the belly, just like that, real quick, from maybe a foot away. Say what you want, maybe they were no supermen, but they weren’t any panty-waists, either. Three in the belly, Pow-Pow-Pow, and he’s still standing there, and damned if he isn’t dead but doesn’t know it, but he is pretty surprised and serves him right, too.
Then everyone else, all the Americans and a Brit or two are yelling and pissing around like they don’t know whether to shit, go blind, or order breakfast, and here’s this dead kraut swaying on his feet, and maybe I’m even thinking I’m in a kettle of bad soup, but the hell with it. But have to do it right, you know, arrogant krautkopf or not. So I put the gun to his head and I let him have it, bang! and his brains come squirting right out his nose, gray and pink, and, you know, it looks pretty funny, so someone yells, “Gesundheit!” and that’s it, brother. That’s all she wrote and we’ve got us one guaranteed dead Nazi.
VIII
A rose is a rose is a rose
The dead are the dead are the dead except when
they aren’t and how do you like it
let’s talk and
Who is on first
I know what I know and I am afraid and I am
afraid
IX
HOMAGE TO SPAIN
1. An Old Man’s Luck
The dusty old man sat on the river bank. He wore steel rimmed spectacles. He had already traveled 12 kilometers and he was very tired. He thought it would be a while before he could go on.
That is what he told Adam Nichols.
Adam Nichols told him he had to cross the pontoon bridge. He really must and soon. When the shelling came, this would not be a good place to stay. The old man in the steel rimmed spectacles thanked Adam Nichols for his concern. He was a very polite old man. The reason he had stayed behind was to take care of the animals in his village. He smiled because saying “his village” made him feel good. There were three goats, two cats, and six doves. When he had no other choice and really had to leave, he opened the door to the doves’ cage and let them fly. He was not too worried about the cats, really, the old man told Adam Nichols; cats are always all right. Cats had luck. Goats were another thing. Goats were a little stupid and sweet and so they had not much luck.
It was just too bad about the goats, the old man said. It was a sad thing.
Adam agreed. But the old man had to move along. He really should.
The old man said thank you. He was grateful for the concern. But he did not think he could go on just yet. He was very tired and he was 76 years old.
He asked a question. Did Adam truly think the cats would be all right?
Yes, Adam said, we both know cats have luck.
Adam thought they had a lot more luck than sweet and stupid goats and 76-year-old men who can go no farther than 12 kilometers when there is going to be shelling.
2. Hunters in the Morning Fog
Miguel woke him. They used to call him Miguelito but the older Miguel had been shot right through the heart, a very clean shot, and so now this one was Miguel. The sun had just come up and there was fog with cold puff-like clouds near to the ground. “Your rifle,” Miguel said. “We are going hunting.”
“Hey,” Adam Nichols said, “what the hell?” He wanted coffee or to go back to sleep.
“Just come,” Miguel said.
There were five of them, Pilar, who was as tough as any man, and Antonio, and Jordan, the American college professor, and Miguel, who used to be Miguelito, and Adam Nichols. They went out to the field. Yesterday it was a battlefield. The day before that it had just been a green, flat field. Some of the dead lay here and there. Not all of the dead were still. Some were already up and some were now rising, though most lay properly still and dead. Those who were up mostly staggered about like drunks. Some had their arms out in front of them like Boris Karloff in the Frankenstein movie. They did not look frightening. They looked stupid. But they were frightening even if they did not look frightening because they were supposed to be dead.
“Say, what the hell?” Adam Nichols asked. His mouth was dry.
“It happens sometimes,” Pilar said. “That is what I have heard. It appears to be so, though this is the first time I personally have seen it.”
Pilar shrugged. “The dead do not always stay dead. They come back sometimes. What they do then is quite sickening. It is revolting and disgusting. When they come back, they are cannibals. They wish to eat living people. And if they bite you, they cause a sickness, and then you die, and then after that, you become like them and you wish to eat living people. We have to shoot them. A bullet in the head, that is what stops them. It’s not so bad, you know. It’s not like they are really alive.”
“I don’t go for this,” Adam said.
“Don’t talk so much,” Pilar said. “I like you very much, Americano, but don’t talk so much.”
She put her rifle to her shoulder. It was an old ’03 Springfield. It had plenty of stopping power. Pilar was a good shot. She fired and one of the living dead went down with the middle of his face punched in.
“Come on,” Pilar said, commanding. “We stay together. We don’t let any of these things get too close. That is what they are. Things. They aren’t strong, but if there are too many, then it can be trouble.”
“I don’t think I like this,” Adam Nichols said. “I don’t think I like it at all.”
“I am sorry, but what you like and what you dislike is not all that important, if you will forgive my saying so,” Miguel said. “What does matter is that you are a good shot. You are one of our best shots. So, if you please, shoot some of these unfortunate dead people.”
Antonio and Pilar and Jordan and Miguel and Adam Nichols shot the living dead as the hunting party walked through the puffy clouds of fog that lay on the field. Adam felt like his brain was the flywheel in a clock about to go out of control. He remembered shooting black squirrels when he was a boy. Sometimes you shot a black squirrel and it fell down and then when you went to pick it up it tried to bite you and you had to shoot it again or smash its head with a rock or the stock of your rifle. He tried to make himself think this was just like shooting black squirrels. He tried to make himself think it was even easier, really, because dead people moved a lot slower than black squirrels. It was hard to shoot a squirrel skittering up a tree. It was not so hard to shoot a dead man walking like a tired drunk toward you.
Then Adam saw the old man who had sat by the pontoon bridge the other day. The old man’s steel rimmed spectacles hung from one ear. They were unshattered. He looked quite silly, like something in a Chaplin film. Much of his chest had been torn open and bones stuck out at crazy angles. There were wettish tubular-like things wrapped about the protruding bones of his chest.
He was coming at Adam
Nichols like a trusting drunk who finds a friend and knows the friend will see him home.
“Get that one,” said Jordan, the American college professor. “That one is yours.”
Yes, Adam Nichols thought, the old man is mine. We have talked about goats and cats and doves.
Adam Nichols sighted. He took in a breath and held it. He waited.
The old man stumbled toward him.
Come, old man, Adam Nichols thought. Come with your chest burst apart and your terrible appetite. Come with the mindless brute insistence that makes you continue. Come to the bullet that will give you at least the lie of a dignified ending. Come unto me, old man. Come unto me.
“You let him draw too close,” Miguel said. “Shoot him now.”
Come, old man, Adam Nichols thought. Come, because I am your luck. Come because I am all the luck you are ever going to have.
Adam pulled the trigger. It was a fine shot. It took off the top of the old man’s head. His glasses flew up and he flew back and lay on the fog-heavy ground.
“Good shot,” Jordan said.
“No,” Adam said, “just good luck.”
3. In a Hole in the Mountain
It is not true that every man in Spain is named Paco, but it is true that if you call “Paco!” on the street of any city in Spain, you will have many more than one “Qué?” in response.
It was with a Paco that Adam Nichols found himself hiding from the fascist patrols. Paco’s advanced age and formidable mustache made him look Gitano. Paco was a good fighter, and a good Spaniard, but not such a good communist. He said he was too old to have politics, but not too old to kill fascists.
Adam Nichols was now a communist because of some papers he had signed. Now he blew up things. For three months, he had been to a special school in Russia to learn demolitions. Adam Nichols was old enough now to know his talents. He was good at teaching young people to speak Spanish, and so for a while he had been a bored and boring high school teacher of Spanish in Oak Park, Illinois. Blowing up things and killing fascists was much more interesting, so he had gone to Spain.
There were other reasons, too. He seldom let himself ponder these.
The previous day, Adam Nichols had blown up a railroad trestle that certain military leaders had agreed was important, and, except for old Paco, the comrades who had made possible this act of demolition were all dead. The fascists were seeking the man who had destroyed the trestle. But Paco knew how to hide.
Where Paco and Adam were hiding was too small to be a cave. It was just a hole in a mountain side. It was hard to spot unless you knew just what you were looking for.
It was dark in the hole. Paco and Adam could not build a fire. But it was safe to talk if you talked in the same low embarrassed way you did in the confessional. Because they were so close, there were times when Adam could almost feel that Paco was breathing for him and that he was breathing for Paco. A moment came to Adam Nichols that made him think, This is very much like being lovers, but then he decided it was not so. He would never be as close with a lover as he was now with Paco.
After many hours of being with Paco in the close dark, Adam said, “Paco, there is something I wish to ask thee.” Adam Nichols spoke in the most formal Spanish. It was what was needed.
Gravely, though he was not a serious man, Paco said, “Then ask, but remember, Comrade, I am an aged man, and do not mistake age for wisdom.” Paco chuckled. He was pleased he had remembered to say “comrade.” Sometimes he forgot. It was hard to be a good communist.
“I need to speak of what I have seen. Of abomination. Of horror. Of impossibility.”
“Art thou speaking of war?”
“Sí.”
“Then dost thou speak of courage, too?” Paco asked. “Of decency? Or self-sacrifice?”
“No, Viejo,” Adam Nichols said. “Of these things, much has been said and much written. Courage, decency, self-sacrifice are to be found in peace or war. Stupidity, greed, arrogance are to be found in peace or war. But I wish to speak with thee of that which I have seen only during time of war. It is madness. It is what cannot be.”
Paco said, “What wouldst thou ask of me?”
“Paco,” Adam Nichols said, “do the dead walk?”
“Hast thou seen this?”
“Verdad. I have seen this. No. I think I have seen this. Years ago, a long time back, in that which was my first war, I thought I saw it. It was in that war, Paco Viejo, that I think I became a little crazy. And now I think I have seen it in this war. There were others with me when we went to kill the dead. They would not talk of it, after. After, we all got drunk and made loud toasts which were vows of silence.” Adam Nichols was silent for a time. Then he said again, “Do the dead walk?”
“Thou hast good eyes, Comrade Adam. Thou shootest well. Together we have been in battle. Thou dost not become crazy. What thou hast seen, thou hast seen truly.”
Adam Nichols was quiet. He remembered when he was a young man and his heart was broken by a love gone wrong and the loss of well-holding arms and a smile that was for no one else but him. He felt worse now, filled with sorrow and fear both, and with his realizing the world was such a serious place. He said, “It is a horrible thing when the dead walk.”
“Verdad.”
“Dost thou understand what happens?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me.”
“Perhaps.” Paco sighed. His sigh seemed to move the darkness in waves. “Years ago, I knew a priest. He was not a fascist priest. He was a nice man. The money in his plate did not go to buy candlesticks. He built a motion picture theater for his village. He knew that you need to laugh on Saturdays more than you need stained glass windows. The movies he showed were very good movies. Buster Keaton. Harold Lloyd. Joe Bonomo. John Gilbert. KoKo the Klown and Betty Boop cartoons. This priest did not give a damn for politics, he told me. He gave a damn about people. And that is the reason, I believe, that he stopped being a priest. He had some money. He had three women who loved him and were content to share him. I think he was all right, this priest.
“It was he who told me of the living dead.”
“And canst thou tell me?”
“Well, yes, I believe I can. There is no reason not to. I have sworn no oaths.”
“What is it, then? Why do the dead rise? Why do they seek the flesh of the living?”
“This man who had been a priest was not certain about Heaven, but he was most definite about Hell. Yes, Hell was the Truth. Hell was for the dead.
“But when we turn this Earth of ours into Hell, there is no need for the dead to go below.
“Why should they bother?
“And canst thou doubt that much of this ball of mud upon which we dwell is today hell, Comrade? With each new war and each new and better way of making war, there is more and more hell and so we have more and more inhabitants of hell with us.
“And of course, no surprise, they have their hungers. They are demons. At least that is what some might call them, though I myself seldom think to call them anything. And the food of demons is human flesh. It is a simple thing, really.”
“Paco . . .”
“Sí?”
“This is not rational.”
“And art thou a rational man?”
“Yes. No.”
“So?”
“ ‘The Living Dead,’ maybe that’s what somebody would call them. Well, hell, don’t you think that would make some newspaperman just ecstatic? It would be bigger than ‘Lindy in Paris’! Bigger than—”
“And thou dost believe such a newspaper story could be printed? And perhaps the Book of the Living Dead could be written? And perhaps a motion picture of the Living Dead as well, with Buster Keaton, perhaps? Comrade Adam, such revelation would topple the world order.
“Perhaps someday the world will be ready for such awful knowledge, Comrade Adam.
“For now, it is more than enough that those of us who know of it must know of it, thank you very kind
ly.
“And with drink and with women and with war and with whatever gives us comfort, we must try not to think over much about what it is we know.”
“Paco,” Adam Nichols said in the dark, “I think I want to scream. I think I want to scream now.”
“No, Comrade. Be quiet now. Breathe deep. Breathe with me and deep. Let me breathe for you. Be quiet.”
“All right,” Adam said after a time. “It is all right now.”
A day later, Paco thought it would be safe to leave the hole in the side of the mountain. They were spotted by an armored car full of fascists. A bullet passed through Paco’s lung. It was a mortal shot.
“Bad luck, Paco,” Adam Nichols said. He put a bullet into the old man’s brain and went on alone.
X
“You’re really not helping me. You know that.”
“Bad on me. I thought I was here for you to help me. My foolishness. Damn the luck.”
“I’ve decided, then, we’ll go the way we did before, with electro-convulsive therapy. We’ll—”
I am for god’s sake 61 years old and I am going to die because of occluded arteries or because of a cirrhotic liver or because of an aneurysm in brain or belly waiting to go pop, or because of some damn thing—and when I die I wish to be dead to be dead and that is all.
“—a series of 12. We’ve often had good results—”
and, believe me, I am not asking for Jesus to make me a sunbeam, I am not asking for heaven in any way, shape, or form. Gentlemen, when I die I wish to be dead.
“—particularly with depression. There are several factors, of course—”
I’m looking for dead, that’s D-E-A-D, and I don’t want to be a goddamn carnival freak show act and man is just a little lower than the angels and pues y nada and you get older and you get confused and you become afraid.