It iss as though I am dead. I do not get letter until to say my father iss dead and I haf killed him, and that one iss now home from Berlin to be baron. But he does not stay at home. In 1912 he iss in Berlin newspaper dead of a lady’s husband and so Franz iss baron after all.
“Then it iss war. But I am in Beyreuth with my wife and my music, because we think that it will not be long, since it was not long before. The fatherland in its pride needed us of the schools, but when it needed us it did not know it. And when it did realize that it needed us it wass too late and any peasant who would be hard to die would do. And so—”
“Why did you go, then?” Bland said. “Did the women make you? throw eggs at you, maybe?”
The German looked at Bland. “I am German; that iss beyond the I, the I am. Not for baron and kaiser.” Then he quit looking at Bland without moving his eyes. “There wass a Germany before there wass barons,” he said. “And after, there will be.”
“Even after this?”
“More so. Then it was pride, a word in the mouth. Now it is a — how you call it? . . .”
“A nation vanquishes its banners,” the subadar said. “A man conquers himself.”
“Or a woman a child bears,” the German said.
“Out of the lust, the travail,” the subadar said; “out of the travail, the affirmation, the godhead; truth.”
The M.P. was rolling another cigarette. He watched the subadar, upon his face an expression savage, restrained, and cold. He licked the cigarette and looked at me.
“When I came to this goddamn country,” he said, “I thought niggers were niggers. But now I’ll be damned if I know what they are. What’s he? snake-charmer?”
“Yes,” I said. “Snake-charmer.”
“Then he better get his snake out and beat it. I’ve got to report this prisoner. Look at those frogs yonder.” As I turned and looked three of the Frenchmen were leaving the room, insult and outrage in the shapes of their backs. The German was talking again.
“I hear by the newspapers how Franz is colonel and then general, and how the cadet, who wass still the round-headed boy part of a gun always when I last saw him, iss now ace with iron cross by the kaiser’s own hand. Then it iss 1916. I see by the paper how the cadet iss killed by your Bishop—” he bowed slightly to Comyn— “that good man.
So now I am cadet myself. It iss as though I know. It iss as though I see what iss to be. So I transfer to be aviator, and yet though I know now that Franz iss general of staff and though to myself each night I say, ‘You have again returned,’ I know that it iss no good.
“That, until our kaiser fled. Then I learn that Franz iss now in Berlin; I believe that there iss a truth, that we haf not forfeited all in pride, because we know it will not be much longer now, and Franz in Berlin safe, the fighting away from.
“Then it iss this morning. Then comes the letter in my mother’s hand that I haf not seen in seven years, addressed to me as baron. Franz iss shot from his horse by German soldier in Berlin street.
It iss as though all had been forgotten, because women can forget all that quick, since to them nothing iss real — truth, justice, all — nothing that cannot be held in the hands or cannot die. So I burn all my papers, the picture of my wife and my son that I haf not yet seen, destroy my identity disk and remove all insignia from my tunic—” he gestured toward his collar.
“You mean,” Bland said, “that you had no intention of coming back? Why didn’t you take a pistol to yourself and save your government an aeroplane?”
“Suicide iss just for the body,” the German said. “The body settles nothing. It iss of no importance. It iss just to be kept clean when possible.”
“It is merely a room in the inn,” the subadar said. “It is just where we hide for a little while.”
“The lavatory,” Bland said; “the toilet.”
The M.P. rose. He tapped the German on the shoulder. Comyn was staring at the German.
“So you admit you were whipped,” he said.
“Yes,” the German said. “It wass our time first, because we were the sickest. It will be your England’s next. Then she too will be well.”
“Dont say my England,” Comyn said. “I am of the Irish nation.” He turned to Monaghan. “You said, my damned king. Dont say my damned king. Ireland has had no king since the Ur Neill, God bless the red-haired stern of him.”
Rigid, controlled, the German made a faint gesture. “You see?” he said to no one at all.
“The victorious lose that which the vanquished gain,” the subadar said.
“And what will you do now?” Bland said.
The German did not answer. He sat bolt upright with his sick face and his immaculate bandage.
“What will you do?” the subadar said to Bland. “What will any of us do? All this generation which fought in the war are dead tonight. But we do not yet know it.”
We looked at the subadar: Comyn with his bloodshot pig’s eyes, Sartoris with his white nostrils, Bland slumped in his chair, indolent, insufferable, with his air of a spoiled woman. Above the German the M.P. stood.
“It seems to worry you a hell of a lot,” Bland said.
“You do not believe?” the subadar said. “Wait. You will see.”
“Wait?” Bland said. “I dont think I’ve done anything in the last three years to have acquired that habit. In the last twenty-six years. Before that I dont remember. I may have.”
“Then you will see sooner than waiting,” the subadar said. “You will see.” He looked about at us, gravely serene. “Those who have been four years rotting out yonder—” he waved his short thick arm— “are not more dead than we.”
Again the M.P. touched the German’s shoulder. “Hell,” he said. “Come along, buddy.” Then he turned his head and we all looked up at the two Frenchmen, an officer and a sergeant, standing beside the table. For a while we just remained so.
It was like all the little bugs had suddenly found that their orbits had coincided and they wouldn’t even have to be aimless any more or even to keep on moving. Beneath the alcohol I could feel that hard, hot ball beginning in my stomach, like in combat, like when you know something is about to happen; that instant when you think Now. Now I can dump everything overboard and just be. Now. Now. It is quite pleasant.
“Why is that here, monsieur?” the officer said. Monaghan looked up at him, thrust backward and sideways in his chair, poised on the balls of his thighs as though they were feet, his arm lying upon the table. “Why do you make desagreable for France, monsieur, eh?” the officer said.
Someone grasped Monaghan as he rose; it was the M.P. behind him, holding him half risen. “Wa-a-a-i-daminute,” the M.P. said; “wa-a-a-i-daminute.” The cigarette bobbed on his lower lip as he talked, his hands on Monaghan’s shoulders, the brassard on his arm lifted into bold relief.
“What’s it to you, Frog?” he said. Behind the officer and the sergeant the other French people stood, and the old woman. She was trying to push through the circle. “This is my prisoner,” the M.P. said. “I’ll take him anywhere I please and keep him there as long as I like. What do you think about that?”
“By which authority, monsieur?” the officer said. He was tall, with a gaunt, tragic face. I saw then that one of his eyes was glass. It was motionless, rigid in a face that looked even deader than the spurious eye.
The M.P. glanced toward his brassard, then instead he looked at the officer again and tapped the pistol swinging low now against his flank. “I’ll take him all over your goddamn lousy country. I’ll take him into your goddamn senate and kick your president up for a chair for him and you can suck your chin until I come back to wipe the latrine off your feet again.”
“Ah,” the officer said, “a devil-dog, I see.”
He said “dehvildahg” between his teeth, with no motion of his dead face, in itself insult. Behind him the patronne began to shriek in French:
“Boche! Boche! Broken! Broken! Every cup, every saucer, glass, plate — all, all! I will show you! I have kept them for this day. Eight months since the obus I have kept them in a box against this day: plates, cups, saucers, glasses, all that I have had since thirty years, all gone, broken at one time! And it costing me fifty centimes the glass for such that I shame myself to have my patrons—”
There is an unbearable point, a climax, in weariness. Even alcohol cannot approach it. Mobs are motivated by it, by a sheer attenuation of sameness become unbearable. As Monaghan rose, the M.P. flung him back. Then it was as though we all flung everything overboard at once, facing unbashed and without shame the specter which for four years we had been decking out in high words, leaping forward with concerted and orderly promptitude each time the bunting slipped.
I saw the M.P. spring at the officer, then Comyn rose and met him. I saw the M.P. hit Comyn three times on the point of
