by John Hersey
When we came into the street of the quarter, we saw Peace out in it, chopping at the hog-wallow earth with an axe. At each stroke he would hop to one side, so the next cut in the ground would form a cross with the last. There was a wildness about his looks that frightened me even though I saw at once that he was acting out one of our superstitions—driving the threatening storm away with a pattern of crosses of Christ, the white Son of the white God.
At each stroke, as he raised the axe head, Peace lifted himself on tiptoes and then brought the blade down with the ferocity of one splitting fire logs of twisted locust—throwing far more strength into the work of chopping the ground than it seemed to need.
He is already killing, I thought, hup, kill, hup, kill, hup, kill.
So for the first time I faced the real nature of the slaughter that was so soon to begin: that it would not be an abstract holocaust but rather a series of blows on separate human bodies, one by one. I heard Peace’s deep grunts as the strokes went home, and then I heard two men in the circle of onlookers grunting in unison with Peace, and I saw that their lips, like Peace’s, drew back in agony at each frightful crash of the flying iron wedge. I was torn apart. I was terrified of the idea that the killing, once started, might not stop, and might even turn against me, yet I myself felt, in my neck, under the gag of surprise and horror, beginnings of sharp, sweet exclamations. Hah! There! Our turn! Hoo! At last! There!…
The axe bite pulled away, and two big chips of earth crust flipped on their backs, and Peace swung the helve backward and upward, stretching his legs and torso and arms until the head of the tool was higher than the huts—and at that moment there came a single, short, flat crack of thunder.
The axe was already on the way down, but the force was out of the blow.
Before the thud of the head in the ground, a pelting of enormous drops of rain began.
I saw the axe fall out of Peace’s hands, and he raised and spread his arms in a great Y. Waves of fearful disbelief washed across his face.
There ensued, for me, a moment of shock—not because the raindrops had been able to march so thuddingly over the line of our white God’s crosses, but because Peace, in whom I had reposed so much hope, did not seem able to believe that our deity might abandon us. I myself had felt since early morning that our God was looking the other way; all day I had wanted Peace to change the plan while knowing that he would not, could not. Peace seemed now as if he wanted to split all humanity, of whatever color, with the axe.
He stooped for the handle and redoubled his efforts. The onlookers scurried for cover and watched him from doorways. The flakes of earth that he had shived up turned dark, then soft, and soon he was standing in mud hacking at mud.
But there seemed to be no more thunder, and the huge splats of the first downpour gave way to smaller and smaller drops, until the shower seemed virtually over, and Peace, his back glistening, runnels of water streaming out of his hair down his face, stood away, axe handle at hip, and looked at the sky, and seemed satisfied. He strode to Solemn’s doorway.
The rain, however, did not stop, but continued first as a drizzle; gradually the wind, which had fallen still during that first loud spattering, increased, and the raindrops drove slantwise harder and harder as darkness fell.
The rendezvous at the bridge had been set for midnight, and I now hoped that the rain would prove to be only a prolonged shower, and would abate, for though I was prepared to risk my very life—insofar as I understood that concept—it was nevertheless hard to think of risking my life and being wet, chilly, and miserable, too!
Just at dusk the sky broke down on us.
There was enough light left to see the frightful black swirling edge of the new torment, pressing low on the terrain, coming swiftly from the river’s direction, yet it was dark enough so that when the lightning came, in a hundred fitful licks from cloud to cloud and down to trees all around us, we were shattered by the light even before the thunder reached us. I dived on my bed and hid my face but could not escape the bombardment. I felt that it was seeking me out—and then I thought: No! It is after Peace. He is the one who brought this on us. Their magic is stronger than his. God’s crosses didn’t break the storm. Peace refused to postpone. Mink was right: Peace can’t change his mind. The masters’ yellow gods know the plan, and our God with a white skin is not strong enough, or cares too little for us; or perhaps it is His will that we should remain subservient, we should accept our tired backs, we should be, like His son, humble and forgiving. God has abandoned Peace because Peace is an upstart. Peace really has wanted to overthrow, not our masters, but our God Himself. He was trying to chop God with the axe. And this is why Peace cannot change his mind: He aspires to omnipotence. He wants to make and stop storms, enslave and set free, give and take life.
The thunder pounded these thoughts into me.
The wind was soon at a gale, and a wooden shutter at our window banged back and forth as if trying to flee, and when it crashed open sheets of water poured in at the square hole; when it flapped shut the deluge abruptly stopped.
I heard Auntie weeping. She had lit a lantern; it flickered a feeble counterpoint to the almost continuous lightning.
Peace came roaring into our room. He wanted to leave. He shouted that he was ready.
I saw him for an instant in the sputtering light of our lantern, then suddenly he was bathed to the seat of every pore by a flash so close at hand that the sharp crackle of sound, riding the brilliance, seemed to come from him. He was dressed in his ordinary work clothes, and he had tied around his forehead a fillet of red flannel, to keep his hair from plastering down on his face, and in his hand he held his huge jawbone, the yellowy teeth of which sparkled like jewels in the lightning. His lips were drawn back in the grimace-smile of his chopping in the earth. Then the lantern blew out, the lightning stopped for a few moments, and there was only his voice.
“Come, daughters! Call out the people. Time to leave.”
“In this?” Auntie said. Her voice itself seemed to cringe.
“We have to get out there. My men are coming.”
“Not till midnight, Peace. The storm could pass.”
“The storm is safest. They will never see us.”
“How are you going to see your own soldiers?”
Again, as he had at the smithy the night of the last meeting, Peace lost control. “OBEY ME, you turtle women,” he shouted.
We are beaten, I thought then, we have no chance. If God were in him, he would not shout like that. He is incapable of changing the plan in the slightest detail. It is not that God has abandoned us; it is that Peace is not godlike enough.
“Yes, Peace,” Auntie said, but her voice had a hair-raising too careful tone, as if she were speaking to one of them, saying, “Yes, Big Master.”
“Go from room to room and call out the men,” Peace shouted over the wind. “Solemn has a storm lantern. Light it in the cabin there and then meet me at the big-house end of the quarter.”
“Yes, Peace.”
I was drenched before I had run two steps. Going into the wind and rain I could hardly breathe, and I had to turn my head aside and gulp at the air. At each cabin, though I spoke with all the force I could manage, the men were astounded that Peace wanted to go out in the storm. As I ran from door to door, lightning seemed to trip me; each time it winked I would fall to my knees and cover my ears with my hands, but I heard the ripping sounds of the thunder all the same. The night, between flashes, was utterly black. Some cabins had lamps going. Many of the women were weeping, and when I appeared with Peace’s unbending summons, the wails soared, and the wives threw their arms around their husbands’ necks, and the men, tearing themselves out of the hysterical embraces, cursed both their women and Peace.
We met at the head of the street, where Peace, insisting on a count, found that four men had refused to leave their cabins. Bellowing, Peace went aft
er them himself.
Then we set off roundabout through the fields for the smithy, to get our weapons.
The raindrops were coming so hard on the hurricane wind that they seemed to have been maliciously hurled, like handfuls of pebbles. We groped our way on foul footing, leaning into the wind. Now and then a fork of lightning would reveal the party in an instant’s light-frozen tableau: tentative steps, wet clinging clothes, a strong man straining into the force of the storm, a hand at a forehead, a crookback bent to the gale, two men with arms about each other, a mule jawbone gleaming shoulder-high—then total blackness, save for what seemed a globe of solid water glistening around the muffled storm lantern in Auntie’s hand; and a roar of drops hitting the ground and of wind lashing the trees.
We crowded into the smithy, where, though the whole shed shook in the wind and the rain drummed on the roof, it seemed we had found everlasting calm; but Solemn and Tree had a violent argument over the allotment of swords and pikes to our Yen slaves, and before long we were out in the storm again. Peace left Solemn at the shop to hand out arms to other contingents as they arrived.
If possible, the downpour was more vicious than ever. We made our way along the Brook Road as far as the bridge.
I thought we would be the only ones there that night, our dozen men and three women, but soon, to my amazement, the soldiers began to come, in pairs, then in handfuls, then in scores, then in companies.
The hooded lamp was the only light; the storm’s flashes were less frequent now, though the rain and wind continued hard. Faces, streaming with water, swam into the small effulgence of the lamp, and now and then a scythe-sword glinted.
I heard Mink, his nihilism as vigorous as ever, shout in Peace’s face with a wild glee, “Those fires at the Canal Bund are never going to burn.”
“Hah!” Peace shouted. “The tobacco will burn. There’s wood like tinder inside the godowns.” He pushed Mink away with the side of his hand.
The brook was rising. Men were milling about in great disorder. Donkeys brayed at the thunder; in the lightning their huge eyes took fire, their dark noses glistened, their manes looked like blowing smoke.
A frantic man was pushed forward into the lamplight. He had come from Twin Hills, having run all the way; he gasped for air and rolled his eyes.
Brass and True, Ma’s slaves, he said, had informed! They had shut themselves in their master’s office and told him everything, and Ma had warned his cousin Ma out here on the Brook Road and had alerted Warlord Sun at the yamen. Sun had posted thirty guardsmen at the new prison, and fifteen at the yamen gate, and he was sending horsemen out along the Brook Road.
Peace held the jawbone high and shook it and shouted, “TOO LATE! They are too late! We have already started the thing.”
But this cry, which must have been meant to rally the wavering, was a terrible moan, a bursting of frustration and inflexibility in Peace’s massive chest. I knew we were lost; I hugged Harlot and wept, and I could hear her sobs, too.
I felt the ceaseless rain as a heavy, clammy texture weighing on me, like a wet shawl on my shoulders.
By now the brook was rising with alarming speed, and in the lightning, beyond the curtains of glistening beads of rain, I could see its pocked black surface licking at the timbers of the bridge.
Still men gathered. Smart called out that we had passed the count of a thousand. The confusion was frightful, and men argued in screams. Donkeys and mules tossed their heads.
Someone shouted that we had better leave, the bridge would soon be covered.
But Peace called out that the plan had been made, we could not abandon it, some of his captains were still on their way, the old man from West-of-the-Mountains who had been at the siege of Taiyuan had not arrived yet. No! No! We must wait!
Now the water was over the level of the bridgeway. Some city slaves, evidently fearful of being cut off, made a dash for the bridge, and then there was a surge. I heard the railings of the bridge cracking, and there were screams and splashes in the darkness.
I heard—I was sure I heard—Mink laughing.
All semblance of order was gone. Men were tearing at each other, starting off every which way, cursing, howling, and shouting into the swirls of wind.
I was seized, as if by a group of hands at my shoulders, by a feeling of helplessness, a sense that I no longer had any control over where and how my own feet would be planted on the ground, to say nothing of my destiny. Then I realized what was happening: A surge of the tight-packed mob around us was bodily carrying me—and Peace, and our whole group—away from the roadway and along the brookside. There was sloping leaf mold underfoot. I was indeed helpless and might well be stampeded into the stream.
Then I heard Peace begin to shout, “O God, God, God, where are You? White God, where are You?” I wanted to take up this cry, for I had very strongly the feeling of having been abandoned by Him. Why don’t You help us? Can’t You help us? We need You! Where are You?…I could not have said whether Peace was roaring these questions or whether they were reverberating, hollow and wind-rushed, in my own head. It occurred to me that Peace might have experienced, as I had, that slipping sensation, that helplessness of being heaved over the loam footing by the pressure of the crowd which had lost its mind in the storm. Such helplessness would be the one thing an omnipotent being simply could not stand. Yes, I did hear Peace shouting, his speech sounding thick and trembling as it was torn from his mouth by the wind. The bridge washed away with terrible creakings and splittings. I wondered for a moment if all this could really be happening to me. For what was I being punished? I heard the sopping tatters of Peace’s shouts—some sort of raving about the fountains of the great deep and the windows of heaven…the rain was on the earth and the water prevailed exceedingly…. Smart’s dark book! I sensed the mob thinning out. It was as if the men around us were recoiling from the sounds they heard coming from Peace’s mouth, and were scattering, getting away as fast as they could. Had they found Peace out? Should I run? The storm seemed to blow away snatches of the hollow chanting that was now coming from Peace’s throat, and to magnify words here and there: “…FIFTEEN cubits…waters prevailed, and all flesh DIED…fowl, and of cattle, and of beast…CREEPING THING THAT CREEPETH…in whose nostrils was the BREATH of life…” I felt such a bitter sadness. All my hopes of all this time! I thought I heard a bewilderment in Peace’s outcries, as if he were losing his sense of power and could not understand why. “GOD! GOD! WHERE ARE YOU?” The crowd was rapidly breaking up. I had no idea where the men were going—perhaps to hide (from whom? from the yellows? from Peace?) in the woods. I thought of the betrayal of our plans by Brass and True, and it seemed to me for a moment that perhaps it was their unthinkable treachery rather than the storm that had addled and routed Peace and all his army. Peace was chattering about killing the yellow Matriarch; he was moving along the brook, and I followed. I was strongly affected by a need to be obedient. Somehow Peace, Auntie, Harlot, and I drifted off by ourselves and were crashing through a thicket. “Every living substance was DESTROYED on the face of the ground…” We were at the big house; in a flash I saw it looming there, asleep in the typhoon under the walnut trees. But Peace did not approach the gate, and I felt a wind-gust of relief, for my own weak aim to kill had vanished long since. I wanted to hide; I was afraid of being caught. Peace led us away. I felt the mud of tobacco fields under my feet. It now seemed to me that God had abandoned us not by sending a storm, or by failing to fend off a storm sent by the yellows’ deities, but rather had decamped from within each of us, from our natures, from our worthless white souls. Ai, yes, I felt godlessly worthless…. And ahead of me, indeed, I heard Peace shouting self-abasement. No longer the Flood; he was talking about himself—the final loss of his secretly named inner genie, the powerful hero of the war that in the end had simply been rained out. “—is not my name. I am—O God!—not strong. I CANNOT take up the doors of the gate of the c
ity and the two posts and the bar and carry them up the hill before Hebron the green withes GOD GOD GOD they’re tying me tight they have me pinned to the beam by the web on my locks RAZOR RAZOR—my hair!…I’m weak, weak, blind, blind. Fetters of brass, GOD, they’ve harnessed me—the mill, the prison-house mill!…” We were in deep woods. The despair in Peace’s voice was worse than thunder: I had my hands over my ears as we moved, but nevertheless I heard him reach the bottom of the well of his hopelessness when he bellowed three times, in an agony of uttermost surrender, the name of his hero-self so long unspoken: “SAMSON! SAMSON! SAMSON!” Then he fell sobbing to the soaked earth.
“Like the End of the World”
At the first thinning of the night we wakened. The rain had stopped, and our four bodies were wrapped in a sort of ball on a bed of leaf mold in the forest—we three women had curled close about Peace, nesting him in what warmth we had left. The trees, black figurations against the gray, were motionless above us, and the woods around us were as yet birdless, sleeping, silent—until Auntie began to cry with a small girl’s catching whimper.
Peace lifted an arm and drew Auntie into an embrace. “It’s all right now,” he said in a gentle, calm voice.
In a few moments he sat up, looked about us, and said, “I had better move along now. I want you girls to go back to the quarter, get in there before Top Man’s horn.”
No more talk of handmaidens, daughters.
“We are going to see you safe, Peace,” Auntie said, “and no argument. It’s market day.”
Peace accepted that. “Forgot about market day,” he said. It was not yet really light. He said that the other side of Twin Hills was the place to be, they would never look for him on the far side of Twin Hills. We could not tell yet from the sky where the east was. A scythe-pike lay on the ground; Harlot thought she might have been carrying it during the storm. Peace took it up. The mule jawbone was half buried under old leaves. He did not touch it.