by Earle Looker
“That’s what Alan thought – and did. What good it did him!” David said.
It was the first time she had heard the full tone of bitterness in his voice. It was enough to know what he had left unsaid all afternoon. Revolt against reality! Alan had been killed, he meant, when if there was any justice his genius would have lived. She thought of some of her own ghastly wounded living when, in mercy, they who appeared to be fine and useful, dying when it seemed they should have lived. No wonder the survivors thought long thoughts. No reason for these things. No providence and no plan. Had so many ever realized futility before? Had not Alan written to the effect that every man in the field was a god unto himself until another smashed him down? Had death ever seemed so great a part of life? Not even in the greatest plagues had so many doors been marked with sorrow.
So much death broke down faith. When first she had heard her wounded speak of death it had seemed naïve simplicity. But now she knew had she seen and suffered as much as they, her thoughts would be quite as stark. David had asked her of her faith. What was the old faith? A habit. What was habit? Repetition. Nothing seemed to repeat itself, now, but death.
‘Just try,’ she thought, ‘to clothe the truth in decent words to next-of-kin when no longer they believe in God, or prayer, or an afterlife. Domine refugium. Dominus illuminatio. Deus noster refugium. Perhaps it’s the need for beautiful imagination through the wars and pestilences that keep the old faiths going? But now, just try to use faith to soften reality! I won’t have it!’
No wonder when men revolted now they did it thoroughly. Naïve as it might seem, whether the old faiths had been half believed or not, something of their old restraints still clung to them, even the fear of future punishment. But now! No longer could you argue a man out of it.
Suddenly, she saw the way to halt him, down a path as straight and clear, well-trodden and sure as it must be ancient. She was startled she seemed only to have begun to think herself – as fresh from the field, she reasoned, fresh from Alan’s death, and therefore he must think he saw more clearly than ever he had before. He must take for granted she saw reality as he did. Wouldn’t anyone, who had really worked with the wounded?
“You spoke of Alan,” she said, “and his ideas. What good it did him,” Anne said. “No good at all, you think. You’re wrong. And you imply much more by that and by your bitterness. But David, you can’t dismiss it all like that. If it’s Alan’s death that’s fixed your ideas – on reality – you’re wrong. If it’s all the death you’ve seen, your own men, they haven’t died in vain. If, from all you’ve seen, you’ve come to some strange, dreadful conclusions – like denying a providence, thinking there’s no God, no answer to prayer, no immortality – you’re wrong about them all.”
His amazement was even greater than she had expected.
She had seen straight through him, David thought. She understood his thoughts. She understood that ill-considered phrase “revolt against reality”. How could she have failed to understand? He felt his brow hot with shame. He had given himself clear away. Could she understand his reasons? But her comment had implied she did fully understand. Yet, after all, Anne had said what he would have wished her to think, and he was glad she had the old familiar faith, so fine a thing it seemed now that he had lost it. He looked at her again; she seemed quietly alert. But if she understood him, then how could she make this comment? How could she believe what she had said? It was not possible from what she must have seen and felt. The whole tide of action, David thought, had taken another turn, like the sudden movement of forces in the field, hidden behind the mist but so surely felt it meant change of direction and objective. Certainly she could not believe such nonsense. Certainly she had pretended. Pretended because she cared enough to turn him from his revolt? Now he saw how she had indeed pretended, knowing he would understand it as pretense, because she wished him to see how much she cared.
“You can’t believe that!” he said. “I wish you could. But you can’t, any more than I. But it’s a damned good lie – a happy fiction. We may never see eye to eye on this matter. We both care too much, and will possibly continue to misunderstand; each of us just always wants to do what is best in our own way.”
David took his head in his hands.
“You’re sure,” she said slowly and with self-possession. “I can’t believe what I’ve said? So why, you ask, do I lie?”
He looked at her, unable to speak.
“Why should I lie?” she repeated, but without anger. “If the reason I suspect is correct then I’m less ashamed you understood me than I’m glad. Eyes like yours can see through – a helmet. A mind 1ike yours knows what to do. What else I’d like to say to you can’t be said this afternoon. Put it this way – don’t think I shall ever forget you!”
He heard himself laugh for the first time, it seemed, since the war began. “I’ll remember all about you – until tomorrow.”
3
“This Colonel Gaspard,” she asked, “is he really so clever?”
David’s disturbance communicated from his fingers to his cigarette case. “In some ways, yes; he’s clever; in others – well – we don’t see eye to eye. Cigarette?”
She looked into his face, not at the open case, as she took it. He twisted the ring of his briquette, blew upon the spark, held the cord to the cigarette between her lips, remembered how Gaspard had burned his bottom with his smoldering briquette in the traverse yesterday and grinned to himself. The cigarette, he thought, as it caught the glow, had become strangely symbolic with women since convention was still against their smoking in public – except in any railway station when the hospital trains came in: women waiting to light cigarettes to put between the lips of the stretcher cases who could not raise their hands, an expression of sympathy and touch of honor. Then there was the meaning of the lighting of a cigarette by a girl for a man, a gesture still new enough to be full of comradely feeling, if not affection, to be carelessly done. She knew this, of course. ‘Now,’ he thought, ‘for a try at Gaspardian strategy!’ and so snuffed the briquette and replaced it in his pocket.
Anne obscured her eyes in smoke for a moment.
David opened his case again but ignored his lighter. ‘It would be natural now,’ he thought, ‘for her either to hand her light to him or to light the cigarette for him.’ If she did that, he would remark.
“Give it to me,” she said and lit one from the other. David watched her hands. She was handing him her own cigarette as her arm swung up in a graceful, considered, almost caressing motion to his face, placing it between his lips
David jumped, spat out the cigarette, swore an involuntary battalion oath. She had placed the burning end of it between his lips. Her laughter came in gusts. She flung up her arms and laughed again.
David rubbed his scorched lips. “I know how to put out this fire! And he pulled her roughly to him and kissed her. It did not quench the fire. He felt it blaze up to envelop them both. She merged with him without further hesitation or doubt. They possessed a sympathy distinct and unique. Time stood still for them to sink out of the world for a moment. David thought the first ecstasy of death must be like this. He felt infused with new elements of life. But while all the intimate sensations of holding her seemed to touch every fiber of satisfaction he possessed, none of these could overcome his increasing feeling that it was so natural it was thus more than ever strange; that he would have been denied a right had it been otherwise; that this was the reward of his constancy to her; that there must be something in the idea, denied every time it had been hinted: Alan had been with him, and Alan had now returned to her.
“You’re too gentle, David, too respectful. I hadn’t thought this possible. You’re afraid to offend me, to move, to touch me. I don’t want to be afraid of offending you. You’re pretending to yourself I don’t exist. I’d like to know again how it feels to be crushed.”
Her fingers were cool about
his burning face, feeling its contours as if she were blind and must trust only her sense of touch. “I’m afraid you learned how to kiss girls into unconsciousness! You’re so slim and straight! You’re like steel inside.”
“You’re not frightened?” he said.
“Sooner or later we’ll have to have this out, you know – about Alan. I thought you couldn’t entirely understand. He was your childhood friend, your classmate, your comrade and partner in work you’d planned for after this war. He was so much you felt was fine and good and right. David, help me with your questions.”
“My questions?”
“His letters to me about you told me about the questions you asked, how you’re always asking about. . .”
“Letters about me? Why?”
“First because he thought so much of you. Then part of it, he said, was to keep his hand in questioning people and their motives. He said he wasn’t going to let his mind rot in dugouts underground. He felt that when the fighting was over, everyone would be thinking more than ever about personality. He picked you to describe this.”
“That’s right. Knowing his ability, this is almost – terrifying. He was a better man than I’ll ever be.”
“Honest David! Honest even when it might hurt you. That’s one reason why I’ve let you see my feelings.”
“I began with a lie.”
“To soften the blow for me. But I lied to you as well.”
“It didn’t turn you against me?”
“Against you? It’s the reason I’m here.”
“You kept writing? Of course you did. Perhaps that gave hope you’d change.”
He nodded. “I’m glad of that,” David said.
“Not easy to clear our minds of Alan. Really, neither of us want to. We’re both proud of his friendship. We speak of him as if he were still alive. Perhaps that’s natural; the time’s been so short. We think of him because we’ve met again through him, so strangely. I think of him because he told me so much about you. But you did it to bring me back to my senses. I must be what I intended. I’ve never felt toward anyone as I feel toward you, David. I don’t like to use the words, but how much of it is physical attraction and how much of it is my own revolt against reality, I don’t know – revolt – I couldn’t say it before. But now I must not fly into pieces, David, after the fine job you’ve done all through the fighting. You’ve gone absent without leave for me. You’re going to be punished one way or another for that.”
“Anne! Not now! No danger of me going on the loose now. Anne, my dear, I can’t. But I do love you.”
‘’’David, you think you know! But I’m sure.”
“You can’t be sure so quickly.”
“I knew from the beginning. I’m the first woman you’ve seen for months.”
“But the last I’ll ever look at.”
“David, we’re moving too fast.”
“Look here, these things happen.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I know enough. I …”
“We must hold too much in common, David, not to take stock of ourselves and what we’ve got to face.”
“Something about me you distrust?”
“No, David, there’s no one I would trust more completely. But you’re still suffering from shock, like a wounded man. The blows you’ve felt are like head wounds. Listen to me, David. I’ve learned something from my wounded. I know the kind of man you are. You’ve seen the main difference in men from your own wounded. Like a man with a really fearful wound – despite it, he sits up on his stretcher and demands a cigarette. But a man, who has worked with his head, a student, one who has worked in the professions or the arts, whose wound is just a scratch by comparison – he’s prostrate. He has a lot to shock. That’s you. Like a tuning fork. Alan was like that too. You’re like him. You’re a writer, an idealist – at least you were before the war – believing in decency, honor, all the rest of it and working for them. Maybe you’re eight feet high and four feet broad, but your life is in your mind. What’s happened to it? I know. You were wounded by each brutal fact you saw and felt, the last blow was Alan’s death. What did you think when he was killed? You have been careful not to tell me.”
“I found you, so now it doesn’t matter”
“It matters so much you went absent without leave.”
“It wasn’t a pretty picture.”
“It must have been the last piece of reality against which you revolted.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“Then tell me.”
“His death seemed the end of all I’d ever hoped. Until today.”
“David, you don’t have to justify revolt to me. But I must know what you thought.”
“The best of men is no more than an insect is what I thought. A reality that is brutal, futile, hopeless; just a mass of men groveling and struggling among themselves before they kill each other off. I hadn’t thought about it much during the fighting. You don’t. Not if you want to keep command. You push thoughts away as quickly as you can. That sort of thinking and morale don’t mix. You’ve got to put on a show of good morale before your officers and your men. You concentrate on what needs to be done and how to do it, on the details of action and questions about what might be next and how ready your command might be. When you’re out of action you’re busier than ever with small details. You’re worried to death all the time you’re not walking in your sleep. Your one vice is to sit without thinking at all. You get quite adept at it. You cultivate blindness to things that are horrible. It becomes a kind of comfort. But I thought I had seen it all until Alan was killed so senselessly. Then in another minute, armistice – victory! But no victory! The last shreds had been ripped away so there might be something beyond the physical, something that could also be touched and more than could be seen and felt of hope.
“Then I must have gone into the blue,” he continued. “Because, though I’d seen him killed and felt a summing up of reality, into a total which was futility, I had feelings that denied all facts. Like leading a column along a road. You feel the weight of marching men behind you. You’re not so much leading as being pushed by their weight behind you. You feel it there between the shoulder blades. It’s almost strong enough to lean back against. Alan seemed a force like that. Why did I come to you for him? He seemed to push me here. Come close to me!”
“David, be gentle. Be careful or we’ll regret it. We must think this out, not be confused. We must wait until we know just where we stand.”
“You think I’d ever let you go? So many things we haven’t said. We don’t know what we think. My own reality may be almost as strange as yours. Do you realize we seem to have no faith in anything?”
“In the old things, no”, she said. “In each other …”
“That’s not enough, not half enough. There never was a time like this. Never has so much we thought was true been swept away, everything that might hold us firm in what we might hope to do. I came here because I thought and hoped, Anne – hoped for what?”
“Hoped you might be the one, David, who’d try to sort all this out.”
“It’s getting late, and you need your rest. May I see you tomorrow, Anne?”
“But David, you must get back to your command.”
“Not until I’ve seen you again.” Abruptly he stood to go, seeming very tall to her, filling the room. He reached for his cap, gloves, riding crop. “I must see you tomorrow,” he said with finality.
“But David …”
“I mean just that – nothing more or less.”
“Well, I’d intended to go riding tomorrow. I’m off duty. Tomorrow morning, might we ride in the Bois? If I were not safe with you, we’d know we were mistaken,” Anne said.
David laughed. “That instant you put on armor!”
“Of course I’ll come. But, David, we can’t talk
this out today, or tomorrow.
“If you – if we – think it’s so important, then it’s something to be hammered out while it’s hot. Each minute we get away from today, the hazier the truth gets. We let it slip now – it’s gone. It’s only our experience that counts, isn’t it? Nothing outside means anything. Am I right?”
“Perhaps,” she sighed.
“It’s our experience we’ve got to understand. What’s happened to you and to me? What can we find in it that’s true …?”
“True and what we can live by,” Anne finished.
“That sounds as though we’re beginning to really state the objective.”
“That does sound reasonable, yes.”
“What do you want? You’re not willing to trust the strength of our – mutual attraction?”
“I guess that’s it, David.”
“You don’t know whether it’s love or something else?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“But even love, you think, isn’t enough. So you’re reaching for something more, something else? I know what you want: something to take the place of the faith and idealism we’ve lost?”
“That’s why this can’t be worked out so quickly, David.”
“Why not, Anne? We’ve all the facts. There’ll never be any more, not after today. Difficult to work it out? Of course, but so is any thinking out what’s happened and why. Either we know what we think about it or we don’t. If we don’t, then we think until we do.”
He thought, ‘Something to take the place of the faith and idealism we’ve lost! New conclusions to take their place. New conclusions! Absurd! Naïve! Neither absurd nor naïve,’ he argued to himself, ‘to those who had been through this war, to those who had seen enough action to understand the need for firm conclusions, to those who had lost faith and the direction given by the old ideas.’
“What we need,” Anne said, “is some plan, not hard and fast, but some attitude at least. No more than that but some attitude at least. No more than that, I think. Something that’ll give us purpose – beyond ourselves.”