The Hour of The Donkey

by Anthony Price

  The Tynesider continued to goggle at him, and so did Bastable.

  Wimpy pointed. ‘Your bloody lanyard, Harry—you’ re still wearing it. And they saw it, by God, too—if we don’t get out of here right now, Hadwin, the two of us, we’ve had it. Is there a way out, man?’

  Bastable looked down in horror at the treacherous yellow-and-grey snake on his shoulder. How could he have been so stupid as to forget it? Die Abuzsleine— how could he have been so criminally stupid! Feverishly, he tore at his epaulet to get the thing off.

  ‘There’s mebbe a rood oot, if yah ganna tek a chance, sar,’ said the Tynesider. ‘Mind, it’s oonly ‘aff a chance, aah’m tellin’ yew, sar—‘

  ‘We’ll take it,’ snapped Wimpy.

  ‘Reet, sar. Coom oon, then!’ The Tynesider led the way down the debris-littered passage ahead.

  They followed him down the narrow passage, Wimpy hopping painfully, supporting himself with one hand on the wall, until they reached a door.

  The room beyond was a slaughter-house at first glance. At second glance … it must have been a wash-room or a laundry-room of some sort once, with large stone sinks beneath antique brass taps … but at second glance it was still a slaughter-house, with its huge table stained with blood—there was blood everywhere—and the floor was thick with blood-stained bandages and dressings.

  ‘Aye,’ said the Tynesider, nodding at Wimpy, ‘yew’ll nah this place reet enough, Doctor. They patched oop some ov thor aan, but it were mostly wor lot, more’s the pity. The buggers cut us to bits, theer fukken tanks did, cut us to fukken ribbons. Mind, they did thor best for wor lads, aa’ll say that for thum — trayted us the same as theer aan.’ He pointed to the outside door. ‘But the garden’s full uv them they could dee nowt wi’ them that was ower far gone, sar.’

  ‘Where are the German medical people?’ asked Wimpy.

  ‘Buggered off and left iz this moirnin’, sar, wi’ the fukken tanks. Left iz in charge, wi’ one uv theers an’ ine, an’ one uv wor aan from the Durhams—tha’ wi’ the poor wounded in the front rooms noo, waitin’ ter be moved oot.’

  The front door banged in the distance.

  ‘Quick, man!’ exclaimed Wimpy. ‘They’re coming!’

  ‘Get oonder the tebble, sar!’ Hadwin pointed under the huge operating table. ‘Twa stretchers—yew lay yorsels doon on them, an’ aah’ll cover yew wi’ blankets, an’ the tebble wi’ a shayet. Then if they see yew they’ll think yor joost twa more deed ‘uns, like them poor buggers oot there, mebbe.’

  ‘Harry—‘ Wimpy began. But by then Bastable was already half-way on to his stretcher under the table.

  ‘That’s reet, sar—that’s reet!’ The Tynesider arranged a blanket over him. ‘Noo—leave yer byuts sticken’ oot the end thar, an’ cover yer face—there, that’s champion! Noo, divunt mek a noise, an’ aah’ll coom back for yew when aah can. Mayntime, aah’ll gan oot th’ back way—‘

  For a moment, there was silence, but then Bastable heard the beating of his heart, his tell-tale heart, which he must still somehow.

  This was the second time that he had been dead, and with his boots showing too— passing for dead among the dead once again, except that this time he knew what he was doing and was not at all sure he could act the part with the conviction it required if the Germans looked under the table.

  The blanket against his face wasn’t soft, it was strangely stiff, almost like cardboard.

  At first he had hardly understood a word the Tynesider had said, it had almost been a foreign language. But then, quite suddenly, he had understood every word, every fukken word.

  In the silence he could still hear the distant pop-pop-pop of machine-guns, and the heavier poop—it was not a rumble, but merely a gradation up from the pop-pop-pop—the poop of heavier guns.

  And now the crunch of footsteps in the passage, much closer.

  It seemed that all he had left was his sense of hearing—

  The blanket against his face was stiff with blood, of course. But he could no longer feel that, it was the knowledge inside his head, mixed with equally sickening fear.

  The door cracked open.

  German voices. Once again Bastable experienced the humiliation of hearing only guttural sounds, without the least understanding of what they meant. Wimpy would be lying there beside him, making sense of those sounds, while all he could do was to lie like a block of wood, like a dead man, like a donkey—like a dead donkey—and understand nothing.

  He forced himself to listen to the harsh voices. It was incredible that this was the same language as in the German lieder—those meaningless, but heart-wrenchingly beautiful songs Mother loved to play—the language of Goethe and Bach and Beethoven, about whom he knew next to nothing except that they were great men like Shakespeare and Milton and Newton, and that it would be in their language that the orders for his death might come in the next moment.

  He knew that he was trying to keep sane, and to stop screaming with terror in protest that he hadn’t been born and brought up with love and gentle kindness, and trained and educated, to lie under a blood-stiffened blanket in a French laundry on a summer’s afternoon with the fear of death sweating out of him through every pore—this wasn’t Harry Bastable at all—it was a stranger, because this couldn’t happen to Harry Bastable—

  Bastable!

  One of the Germans had said his name—

  Bast-abell- schwisser-glutzig-aben-geruber-begegen-schlikt-wollen-nachtvice-Bastabell-gabble-gabble-gabble-abuzsleine-gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble- Willis—

  Willis!

  There was more than one voice, in fact there were three voices: there was the subaltern’s voice, which was now deferential, almost scared, with only the shreds of obstinacy left in it—the voice of a junior officer— who knew his orders, but also knew that he was overmatched; then there was a bullying voice, before which the subaltern’s voice retreated; and finally there was a third voice, softer than the bullying one, yet somehow more frightening, because it seemed to require no loud threats to make its points—it was this voice which finally reduced the subaltern to heel-clicking obedience.

  After that the door opened and shut again. But just as Bastable was about to breathe out a full shuddering lungful of relief the second voice started up again, only more conversationally, as deferential as the young officer’s had been.

  The third voice replied, and as Bastable caught his own name and Wimpy’s he became conscious again of the fear that had been pulsing through him all the time. He could also feel the lanyard, which was screwed up into a sweaty ball in his right hand, which he had had no time to get rid of— the symbol of his pride in his regiment and in himself for being privileged to wear it, which had become the mark of Cain for every man who wore it, the insignia of death in primrose-yellow and dove-grey.

  The voices droned on and on, back and forth, until finally the door banged open again and heels clicked.

  The bullying voice challenged the heel-clicker.

  The heel-clicker spoke, and it was the young officer again, only now he wasn’t scared, he was terrified.

  For a second neither of the SS officers replied. In the stifling darkness under the blanket Bastable heard the pop-popping of the machine-gun once more, and because of the sudden silence in the room—and also presumably because the door was still open—it sounded much louder. And then, in the last fraction of that same second, he knew why the young officer was frightened, and also why the SS officers had been struck momentarily speechless, and even what was going to happen next, all these thoughts travelling through his brain with the speed of light to fill the slow-moving instant of silence with time to spare in which his own terror was transformed into panic.

  The bullying voice roared out in exactly the tone of incredulous rage that he had expected—that he even recognized from his own experience of bullying senior officers, so that although every word was still unintelligble to him he knew their sum total down to the last syllable.

  ‘What
the bloody hell d’you mean—“they’ve gone”?’

  He lost the rest in the tide of hopelessness which engulfed him. They had vanished—they had passed through the main door into the field hospital, and their guards simply hadn’t thought to follow them, and now they couldn’t be found so the Germans would search for them more thoroughly, and in no time at all they would be found again without difficulty. All they had to do was to look under the table—

  The door banged and boots stamped and scraped metallically on the stone floor within inches of his ear.

  Now they were going to be discovered. It was impossible that they could escape, it had always been impossible—he might just as well throw back the blanket himself, rather than wait to have it ripped off him, and surrender to the inevitable with dignity and courage … except that it wouldn’t be dignity and courage, it would be in the fear and horror of death, shaking like the coward he was—he could feel his hands shaking at the very thought of it and his body turning to water in physical rejection of what was about to happen to it.

  Oh God— he ‘d wet himself! He could feel the uncontrollable spasm of the muscles in his penis as they relaxed, and the warm damp spread in his trousers as his bladder emptied itself, the warmth turning colder even as he tried unavailingly to stem the flood.

  Oh, God—oh, God—oh, God—

  Now he couldn’t stand up even if he wanted to. If he stood up now they would see a great dark patch in his trousers, and they would know he had wet himself— the great dark hateful badge of shame—

  ‘Listen to me carefully—‘

  An English voice—? Bastable’s senses reeled with the shock of it.

  ‘I will ask you a question. You will answer it.’

  Not an English voice: it was too perfect—each word was too distinct and complete in itself, not like the related parts of a whole sentence, but like carefully chosen samples picked deliberately from a rack in order to make a sale to a customer who didn’t really know his own mind.

  And he knew the voice, too—

  ‘If you do not answer .. . correctly … truthfully … I will have you taken out and shot—do you understand? Shot—do you understand that?

  No answer.

  ‘You do understand.’

  Not a question, but a promise. And with such pure and careful English, without either accent or passion, it was impossible not to understand.

  ‘Two of your soldiers entered this building— officers. You assisted them. One of them was wounded, the other was an officer of your medical … corps.’

  Not questions, but facts, the words stated.

  ‘Now … and think correctly before you answer—remember that which I have told you . .. that if you do not answer … truthfully … you will be shot. Yes?’

  Not a sound. But then, the question had not been asked yet.

  ‘Where-are-those-officers?’

  The cold feeling round Bastable’s crutch spread upwards.

  ‘I ask one more time. Where—‘

  ‘Ootside.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ootside.’

  There was a pause, while both Bastable and the SS officer worked out the meaning of ootside.

  ‘What is that?’ Ootside was evidently not in the SS man’s dictionary.

  ‘Ootside in the garden, man—ootside!’ The Tynesider addressed the SS man with a mixture of incredulity and contempt, as any intelligent man might do to a hopeless idiot. ‘Ootside—divunt yew understan’ plain English? Do yew not naa what aah’m sayin’?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘In … the garden?’

  ‘Aye. Ootside in the fukken garden—oot there, man. Aah left ‘em oot there, aah’m tellin’ yew. Thar!’ Now pity joined contempt.

  ‘Where? Show me!’

  Footsteps passed on each side of Bastable.

  ‘Thar, man!’

  It was a nice distinction, thought Bastable hysterically, that the Tynesider was refusing point-blank to call the enemy ‘sir’.

  ‘But they are not there now.’

  ‘Well, that’s where aah left them—settin’ thar.’

  ‘Why did you leave them there?’

  ‘Haddaway, man! They wor fukken officers, an’ aah’m oonly a fukken orderly, aah niver had aany say in it. Aah told them aarl the beds is full oop. So the one says “Alreet, we’ll set doon ootside until yew find me marra’ somewhere to lay.” An’ they set doon thar, aah tell yew—an’ aa doon’t care. It’s no ma job to lewk after fukken officers, aah’ve got men deein’ back inside … an’ this one, he canna walk, but he’s no deein’, aa can see that. So aah doon’t care where they set.’

  Pause. As well there might be, thought Bastable, as he struggled to disentangle the sense of it, from which ‘It’s not my job to look after fucking officers’ rang clearest and loudest and truest to life.

  ‘So you have no idea where those officers are now?’ The SS man sounded more desperate than angry.

  ‘Aah doon’t noo—haddaway, man—aah’m tellin’ yew—aah’ve got better things t’doo than lewk after the likes of them. “Fukken find me marra’ a bed”, he says to me. But aah’m not after findin’ a bed for a man that’s no bad hurt—fukken officers!’ The Tynesider loaded a world of bitterness into his words, the weight of their deeper truth adding conviction to the lie. ‘So aah left them settin’ thar ootside, an’ that’s the last aah see uv them like aah said. An’ if they’ve buggered off it’s none uv ma dooin’—aah’m noo their keeper, aah’ve got better bliddy things t’doo.’

  The SS man digested that in silence again for a moment, as he had done the Tynesider’s previous outbursts, aid Bastable could almost conjure up a tiny spark of sympathy for him out of his own bitter experiences with other ranks whose ability to lie their way out of any situation had alws ys defeated him.

  Except that this man was lying to save his own life—and theirs!

  Then fear took over again, and he lay bathed in it as the voices and sounds snarled and shouted and cracked and stamped all around him in the darkness, beyond fear and despair and understanding—it couldn’t be Harry Bastable, Captain Bastable, Mr Henry Bastable of Gloves and Hosiery, wash-your-hands-and-comb-your-hair Henry—it couldn’t be any of those— oh, God! it couldn’t be any of those lying now in sweat and urine under a blood-stiffened blanket.

  ‘Harry!’ The whisper reached him in the darkness. They had gone. It seemed impossible, when they only had to look under the table—it seemed so impossible that perhaps that was why they hadn’t looked under the table.

  ‘Harry!’

  Why couldn’t Wimpy leave him alone. Anger stirred in Bastable at the prospect of being forced into activity, with the Germans all around them, when they didn’t stand a chance. And anyway, one thing he had learned was that however bad things were, whatever happened next was bound to be worse. So, better to lie here and hope—that was preferable to any madcap scheme Wimpy might have in mind.

  He felt the anger spreading, engorging him.

  ‘Harry—‘ Wimpy cut off abruptly.

  The door banged again. He knew the sound of that bloody door by heart, and the loud, insistent firing beyond it, and hated both sounds, and hated Wimpy, and hated himself—

  The blanket was ripped from him before he had time to draw breath, and he found himself staring at a German face which had been thrust under the table.

  The German’s eyes widened in astonishment and his mouth opened even wider. All Bastable’s rage transferred itself in that instant from the rest of the world to this one man, the final disturber of his misery.

  The German dropped the edge of the blanket, and started to draw back and to shout at the same time as—Bastable caught his wrist. The grip was too weak—it was too slow off the mark to tighten in time—but it held the man just long enough to destroy his co-ordination: instead of ducking back and straightening up and shouting, he failed to clear the table in time and caught the back of his head with a loud crack on the underside of it, which reduced the
shout to an exclamation of pain. At the same time his soft forage cap tipped over his eyes and he let go his rifle, which fell with a clatter on the stone floor.

  Bastable grabbed wildly with his other hand, and felt his fingers close round the leather ankle of a jackboot. He pulled back with all his might, felt the German begin to overbalance, and rolled himself violently off the stretcher against the man’s legs in an attempt to sweep him off his feet.

  The space between the table and the wall on this side of the room was so constricted that for a desperate moment he thought the man wasn’t going to fall. Then the hobnails on the jackboots lost their purchase with the stone, and the man fell with a scrape and a crash in the narrow aisle, with Bastable’s face between his legs. A field-grey knee raked the side of his head in passing, and then a thigh pressed against his face: he bit into the thigh savagely, like an animal, through the thick material. One of his arms was now imprisoned under the German’s leg, but with his other he could reach upwards, towards a face—a snapping mouth, like his own—a rough chin—and a throat—

  He clamped his fingers on the throat, but as he did so a hand fastened on his own throat, the thumb digging agonizingly into the soft angle of his jaw. He lashed out furiously with his leg, which was half across the German’s chest. For a moment the fingers on his throat lost their grip, but then the German managed to wrap his other arm round the leg and the fingers tightened again, pushing his head back. He abandoned the attempt to free his leg and concentrated on his enemy’s throat, but the pain of the grip on his own windpipe was too great.

  Suddenly, he realized that he was no longer trying to subdue the German, he was fighting for his life. The realization caused him to heave wildly in an attempt to break free, but the convulsion failed to loosen the pressure—it was his own grip that was weakening as his neck was forced back towards breaking point, which he could only relieve by pressing downwards into the very neck-grip that was squeezing the life out of him. He could feel his strength ebbing.

  His enemy was the stronger man—his consciousness was slipping into darkness—he had taken his enemy at a disadvantage, but his enemy was the stronger man—and defeat was red agony as the carrier burst into flame and cane crushing down on top of him—