A Fable

by William Faulkner

  ‘Yes, free of you at last, or so I thought. Or you were free of him that is, since he was the one who had better be afraid. If any minuscule of danger still remained for you in him, he himself would eradicate it now by the surest means of all: marriage, a wife and family; so many economic responsibilities to bear and discharge that he would have no time over to dream of his moral rights; a family, children: that strongest and most indissoluble bond of all to anneal him harmless forever more into his present and commit him irrevocable to his future and insulate him for good and always from the griefs and anguishes (he had none of course in the sense I mean because he still had never heard of you) of his past. But it seems that I was wrong. Wrong always in regard to you, wrong every time in what I thought you thought or felt or feared from him. Never more wrong than now, when apparently you had come to believe that bribing him with independence of you had merely scotched the snake, not killed it, and marriage would compound his threat in children any one of which might prove impervious to the bribe of a farm. Any marriage, even this one. And at first it looked like your own blood was trying to fend and shield you from this threat as though in a sort of instinctive filial loyalty. We had long ago designed marriage for him and, now that he was free, grown, a man, a citizen, heir to the farm because we—my husband and I—knew now that we would have no children, his military service forever (so we thought then) behind him, we began to plan one. Except that he refused twice, declined twice the candidates virtuous and solvent and suitable which we picked for him, and still in such a way that we could never tell if it was the girl he said no to or the institution. Perhaps both, being your son though as far as I know he still didn’t know you even existed; perhaps both, having inherited both from you: the repudiation of the institution since his own origin had done without it; the choicy choosing of a partner since with him once passion had had to be enough because it was all and he in his turn felt, desired, believed that he deserved, no less to match his own inheritance with.

  ‘Or was it even worse than that to you: your own son truly, demanding not even revenge on you but vengeance: refusing the two we picked who were not only solvent but virtuous too, for that one who had not even sold the one for the other but in bartering one had trafficked them both away? I didn’t know, we didn’t know: only that he had refused, declined, and still in that way I told you of less of refusal than negation, so that we just thought he wasn’t ready yet, that he still wanted a little more of that young man’s bachelor and tieless freedom which he had only regained—regained? found—yesterday when he doffed the uniform. So we could wait too and we did; more time passed but we still thought there was enough of it since marriage is long enough to have plenty of room for time behind it. Then—suddenly, with no warning to us who knew only work and bread, not politics and glory—it was 1914 and whether there had been time enough or not or he had been right to wait or not didn’t matter. Because he didn’t wait now either; he was gone that first week in the old uniform still stinking of the mothballs from the garret trunk but even that was no quicker nor faster than we were; you know where the farm is—was (no: still is since it will have to still be there in order to be a basis for what you will finally grant us) so I dont need to tell you how we left it either since a part of your trade is coping with the confused and anguished mass of the civilian homeless in order to make room for your victories.

  ‘He didn’t even wait to be called by his class. A stranger might have guessed it to be a young bachelor accepting even war as a last desperate cast to escape matrimony, but that stranger would be wrong of course, as he himself proved two years later. But we knew better. He was a Frenchman now. All France asked of him in return for that dignity and right and that security and independence was his willingness to defend it and them, and he had gone to do that. Then suddenly all France (all western Europe too for that matter) was loud with your name; every child even in France knew your face because you would save us—you, to be supreme of all, not to command our armies and the armies of our allies because they did not need to be commanded since the terror and the threat was their terror and threat too and all they needed was to be led, comforted, reassured and you were the one to do that because they had faith in you, believed in you. But I knew more. Not better: just more; I had only to match almost any newspaper with this—’ again she moved slightly the closed hand lying in the other palm ‘—and now I knew not only who you were but what you were and where you were. No no, you didn’t start this war just to further prove him as your son and a Frenchman, but rather since this war had to be, his own destiny, fate would use it to prove him to his father. You see? you and he together to be one in the saving of France, he in his humble place and you in your high and matchless one and victory itself would be that day when at last you would see one another face to face, he rankless still save for the proven bravery and constancy and devotion which the medal you would fasten to his breast would symbolise and affirm.

  ‘It was the girl of course; his revenge and vengeance on you which you feared: a whore, a Marseilles whore to mother the grandchildren of your high and exalted blood. He told us of her on his leave in the second year. We—I—said no of course too, but then he had that of you also: the capacity to follow his will always. Oh yes, he told us of her: a good girl he said, leading through her own fate, necessity, compulsions (there is an old grandmother) a life which was not her life. And he was right. We saw that as soon as he brought her to us. She is a good girl, now anyway, since then anyway, maybe always a good girl as he believed or maybe only since she loved him. Anyway, who are we to challenge him and her, if what this proves is what love can do: save a woman as well as doom her. But no matter now. You will never believe, perhaps you dare not risk it, chance it, that he would never have made any claim on you: that this whore’s children would bear not his father’s name but my father’s. You would never believe that they would never any more know whose blood they carried than he would have known except for this. But it’s too late now. That’s all over now; I had imagined you facing him for the first time on that last victorious field while you fastened a medal to his coat; instead you will see him for the first time—no, you wont even see him; you wont even be there—tied to a post, you to see him—if you were to see him, which you will not—over the shoulders and the aimed rifles of a firing-squad.’

  The hand, the closed one, flicked, jerked, so fast that the eye almost failed to register it and the object seemed to gleam once in the air before it even appeared, already tumbling across the vacant top of the desk until it sprang open as though of its own accord and came to rest—a small locket of chased worn gold, opening like a hunting-case watch upon twin medallions, miniatures painted on ivory. ‘So you actually had a mother. You really did. When I first saw the second face inside it that night, I thought it was your wife or sweetheart or mistress, and I hated you. But I know better now and I apologise for imputing to your character a capacity so weak as to have earned the human warmth of hatred.’ She looked down at him. ‘So I did wait too late to produce it, after all. No, that’s wrong too. Any moment would have been too late; any moment I might have chosen to use it as a weapon the pistol would have misfired, the knife-blade shattered at the stroke. So of course you know what my next request will be.’

  ‘I know it,’ the old general said.

  ‘And granted in advance of course, since then he can no longer threaten you. But at least it’s not too late for him to receive the locket, even though it cannot save him. At least you can tell me that. Come. Say it: At least it’s not too late for him to receive it.’

  ‘It’s not too late,’ the old general said.

  ‘So he must die.’ They looked at one another. ‘Your own son.’

  ‘Then will he not merely inherit from me at thirty what I had already bequeathed to him at birth?’

  By its size and location, the room which the old general called his study had probably been the chamber, cell of the old marquise’s favorite lady-in-waiting or perhaps t
iring-woman, though by its appearance now it might have been a library lifted bodily from an English country home and then reft of the books and furnishings. The shelves were empty now except for one wall, and those empty too save for a brief row of the text-books and manuals of the old general’s trade, stacked neatly at one end of one shelf. Beneath this, against the wall, was a single narrow army cot pillowless beneath a neatly and immaculately drawn gray army blanket; at the foot of it sat the old general’s battered field desk. Otherwise the room contained a heavyish, Victorian-looking, almost American-looking table surrounded by four chairs in which the four generals were sitting. The table had been cleared of the remains of the German general’s meal; an orderly was just going out with the final tray of soiled dishes. Before the old general sat a coffee service and its cups and a tray of decanters and glasses. The old general filled the cups and passed them. Then he took up one of the decanters.

  ‘Schnaps, General, of course,’ he said to the German general.

  ‘Thanks,’ the German general said. The old general filled and passed the glass. The old general didn’t speak to the British general at all, he simply passed the port decanter and an empty glass to him, then a second empty glass.

  ‘Since General (he called the American general’s name) is already on your left.’ He said to no one directly, calling the American general’s name again: ‘—doesn’t drink after dinner, as a rule. Though without doubt he will void it tonight.’ Then to the American: ‘Unless you will have brandy too?’

  ‘Port, thank you, General,’ the American said. ‘Since we are only recessing an alliance: not abrogating it.’

  ‘Bah,’ the German general said. He sat rigid, bright with medals, the ground glass monocle (it had neither cord nor ribbon; it was not on his face, his head like an ear, but set as though inevictable into the socket of his right eye like an eyeball itself) fixed in a rigid opaque glare at the American general. ‘Alliances. That is what is wrong each time. The mistake we—us, and you—and you—and you—’ his hard and rigid stare jerking from face to face as he spoke ‘—have made always each time as though we will never learn. And this time, we are going to pay for it. Oh yes, we. Dont you realise that we know as well as you do what is happening, what is going to be the end of this by another twelve months? twelve months? bah. It wont last twelve months; another winter will see it. We know better than you do—’ to the British general ‘—because you are on the run now and do not have time to do anything else. Even if you were not running, you probably would not realise it, because you are not a martial people. But we are. Our national destiny is for glory and war; they are not mysteries to us and so we know what we are looking at. So we will pay for that mistake. And since we will, you—and you—and you—’ the cold and lifeless glare stopping again at the American ‘—who only think you came in late enough to gain at little risk—must pay also.’ Then he was looking at none of them; it was almost as though he had drawn one rapid quiet and calming inhalation, still rigid though and still composed. ‘But you will excuse me, please. It is too late for that now—this time. Our problem now is the immediate one. Also, first——’ He rose, tossing his crumpled napkin onto the table and picking up the filled brandy glass, so rapidly that his chair scraped back across the floor and would have crashed over had not the American general put out a quick hand and saved it, the German general standing rigid, the brandy glass raised, his close uniform as unwrinkleable as mail against the easy coat of the Briton like the comfortable jacket of a game-keeper, and the American’s like a tailor-made costume for a masquerade in which he would represent the soldier of fifty years ago, and the old general’s which looked like a wife had got it out of a moth-balled attic trunk and cut some of it off and stitched some braid and ribbons and buttons on what remained. ‘Hoch!’ the German general said and tossed the brandy down and with the same motion flung the empty glass over his shoulder to crash against the wall.

  ‘Hoch,’ the old general said courteously. He drank too but he set his empty glass back on the table. ‘You must excuse us,’ he said. ‘We are not situated as you are; we cannot afford to break French glasses.’ He took another brandy glass from the tray and began to fill it. ‘Be seated, General,’ he said. The German general didn’t move.

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ he said, ‘that we have been—ja, twice—compelled to destroy French property? Not yours and mine, not ours here, not the fault of any of us, all of us who have to spend the four years straining at each other from behind two wire fences. It’s the politicians, the civilian imbeciles who compel us every generation to have to rectify the blunders of their damned international horse-trading——’

  ‘Be seated, General,’ the old general said.

  ‘As you were!’ the German general said. Then he caught himself. He made a rigid quarter-turn and clapped his heels to face the old general. ‘I forgot myself for a moment. You will please to pardon it.’ He reversed the quarter-turn, but without the heel-clap this time. His voice was milder now, quieter anyway. ‘The same blunder because it is always the same alliance: only the pieces moved and swapped about. Perhaps they have to keep on doing, making the same mistake; being civilians and politicians, perhaps they cant help themselves. Or, being civilians and politicians, perhaps they dare not. Because they would be the first to vanish under that one which we would establish. Think of it, if you have not already: the alliance which would dominate all Europe. Europe? Bah. The world—Us, with you, France, and you, England—’ he seemed to catch himself again for a second, turning to the American general. ‘—with you for—with your good wishes——’

  ‘A minority stockholder,’ the American said.

  ‘Thank you,’ the German general said. ‘—An alliance, the alliance which will conquer the whole earth—Europe, Asia, Africa, the islands;—to accomplish where Bonaparte failed, what Caesar dreamed of, what Hannibal didn’t live long enough to do——’

  ‘Who will be emperor?’ the old general said. It was so courteous and mild that for a moment it didn’t seem to register. The German general looked at him.

  ‘Yes,’ the British general said as mildly: ‘Who?’ The German general looked at him. There was no movement of the face at all: the monocle simply descended from the eye, down the face and then the tunic, glinting once or twice as it turned in the air, into the palm lifted to receive it, the hand shutting on it then opening again, the monocle already in position between the thumb and the first finger, to be inserted again; and in fact there had been no eyeball behind it: no scar nor healed suture even: only the lidless and empty socket glaring down at the British general.

  ‘Perhaps now, General?’ the old general said.

  ‘Thanks,’ the German general said. But still he didn’t move. The old general set the filled brandy glass in front of his still-vacant place. ‘Thanks,’ the German general said. Still staring at the British general, he drew a handkerchief from his cuff and wiped the monocle and set it back into the socket; now the opaque oval stared down at the British general. ‘You see why we have to hate you English,’ he said. ‘You are not soldiers. Perhaps you cant be. Which is all right; if true, you cant help it; we dont hate you for that. We dont even hate you because you dont try to be. What we hate you for is because you wont even bother to try. You are in a war, you blunder through it somehow and even survive. Because of your little island you cant possibly get any bigger, and you know it. And because of that, you know that sooner or later you will be in another war, yet this time too you will not even prepare for it. Oh, you send a few of your young men to your military college, where they will be taught perfectly how to sit a horse and change a palace guard; they will even get some practical experience by transferring this ritual intact to little outposts beside rice-paddies or tea-plantations or Himalayan goatpaths. But that is all. You will wait until an enemy is actually beating at your front gate. Then you will turn out to repel him exactly like a village being turned out cursing and swearing on a winter night to salvage a burnin
g hayrick—gather up your gutter-sweepings, the scum of your slums and stables and paddocks; they will not even be dressed to look like soldiers, but in the garments of ploughmen and ditchers and carters; your officers look like a country-house party going out to the butts for a pheasant drive. Do you see? getting out in front armed with nothing but walking sticks, saying, “Come along, lads. That seems to be enemy yonder and there appear to be a goodish number of them but I dare say not too many”—and then walking, strolling on, not even looking back to see if they are followed or not because they dont need to because they are followed, do follow, cursing and grumbling still and unprepared still, but they follow and die, still cursing and grumbling, still civilians. We have to hate you. There is an immorality, an outrageous immorality; you are not even contemptuous of glory: you are simply not interested in it: only in solvency.’ He stood, rigid and composed, staring down at the British general; he said calmly, in a voice of composed and boundless despair: ‘You are swine, you know.’ Then he said, ‘No,’ and now in his voice there was a kind of invincibly incredulous outrage too. ‘You are worse. You are unbelievable. When we are on the same side, we win—always; and the whole world gives you the credit for the victory: Waterloo. When we are against you, you lose—always: Passchendaele, Mons, Cambrai and tomorrow Amiens—and you dont even know it——’