About the new house I remembered how my mother was always cleaning things out and making a good clearance. One time when my father was away on a hunting trip she made a good thorough cleaning out in the basement and burned everything that should not have been there. When my father came home and got down from his buggy and hitched the horse, the fire was still burning in the road beside the house. I went out to meet him. He handed me his shotgun and looked at the fire. “What’s this?” he asked.
“I’ve been cleaning out the basement, dear,” my mother said from the porch. She was standing there smiling, to meet him. My father looked at the fire and kicked at something. Then he leaned over and picked something out of the ashes. “Get a rake, Nick,” he said to me. I went to the basement and brought a rake and my father raked very carefully in the ashes. He raked out stone axes and stone skinning knives and tools for making arrow-heads and pieces of pottery and many arrow-heads. They had all been blackened and chipped by the fire. My father raked them all out very carefully and spread them on the grass by the road. His shotgun in its leather case and his game-bags were on the grass where he had left them when he stepped down from the buggy.
“Take the gun and the bags in the house, Nick, and bring me a paper,” he said. My mother had gone inside the house. I took the shotgun, which was heavy to carry and banged against my legs, and the two game-bags and started toward the house. “Take them one at a time,” my father said. “Don’t try and carry too much at once.” I put down the game-bags and took in the shotgun and brought out a newspaper from the pile in my father’s office. My father spread all the blackened, chipped stone implements on the paper and then wrapped them up. “The best arrow-heads went all to pieces,” he said. He walked into the house with the paper package and I stayed outside on the grass with the two game-bags. After a while I took them in. In remembering that, there were only two people, so I would pray for them both.
Some nights, though, I could not remember my prayers even. I could only get as far as “On earth as it is in heaven” and then have to start all over and be absolutely unable to get past that. Then I would have to recognize that I could not remember and give up saying my prayers that night and try something else. So on some nights I would try to remember all the animals in the world by name and then the birds and then fishes and then countries and cities and then kinds of food and the names of all the streets I could remember in Chicago, and when I could not remember anything at all any more I would just listen. And I do not remember a night on which you could not hear things. If I could have a light I was not afraid to sleep, because I knew my soul would only go out of me if it were dark. So, of course, many nights I was where I could have a light and then I slept because I was nearly always tired and often very sleepy. And I am sure many times too that I slept without knowing it—but I never slept knowing it, and on this night I listened to the silk-worms. You can hear silk-worms eating very clearly in the night and I lay with my eyes open and listened to them.
There was only one other person in the room and he was awake too. I listened to him being awake, for a long time. He could not lie as quietly as I could because, perhaps, he had not had as much practice being awake. We were lying on blankets spread over straw and when he moved the straw was noisy, but the silk-worms were not frightened by any noise we made and ate on steadily. There were the noises of night seven kilometres behind the lines outside but they were different from the small noises inside the room in the dark. The other man in the room tried lying quietly. Then he moved again. I moved too, so he would know I was awake. He had lived ten years in Chicago. They had taken him for a soldier in nineteen fourteen when he had come back to visit his family, and they had given him to me for an orderly because he spoke English. I heard him listening, so I moved again in the blankets.
“Can’t you sleep, Signor Tenente?” he asked.
“No.”
“I can’t sleep, either.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. I can’t sleep.”
“You feel all right?”
“Sure. I feel good. I just can’t sleep.”
“You want to talk a while?” I asked.
“Sure. What can you talk about in this damn place.”
“This place is pretty good,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“Tell me about out in Chicago,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, “I told you all that once.”
“Tell me about how you got married.”
“I told you that.”
“Was the letter you got Monday—from her?”
“Sure. She writes me all the time. She’s making good money with the place.”
“You’ll have a nice place when you go back.”
“Sure. She runs it fine. She’s making a lot of money.”
“Don’t you think we’ll wake them up, talking?” I asked.
“No. They can’t hear. Anyway, they sleep like pigs. I’m different,” he said. “I’m nervous.”
“Talk quiet,” I said. “Want a smoke?”
We smoked skilfully in the dark.
“You don’t smoke much, Signor Tenente.”
“No. I’ve just about cut it out.”
“Well,” he said, “it don’t do you any good and I suppose you get so you don’t miss it. Did you ever hear a blind man won’t smoke because he can’t see the smoke come out?”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I think it’s all bull, myself,” he said. “I just heard it somewhere. You know how you hear things.”
We were both quiet and I listened to the silk-worms.
“You hear those damn silk-worms?” he asked. “You can hear them chew.”
“It’s funny,” I said.
“Say, Signor Tenente, is there something really the matter that you can’t sleep? I never see you sleep. You haven’t slept nights ever since I been with you.”
“I don’t know, John,” I said. “I got in pretty bad shape along early last spring and at night it bothers me.”
“Just like I am,” he said. “I shouldn’t have ever got in this war. I’m too nervous.”
“Maybe it will get better.”
“Say, Signor Tenente, what did you get in this war for, anyway?”
“I don’t know, John. I wanted to, then.”
“Wanted to,” he said. “That’s a hell of a reason.”
“We oughtn’t to talk out loud,” I said.
“They sleep just like pigs,” he said. “They can’t understand the English language, anyway. They don’t know a damn thing. What are you going to do when it’s over and we go back to the States?”
“I’ll get a job on a paper.”
“In Chicago?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you ever read what this fellow Brisbane writes? My wife cuts it out for me and sends it to me.”
“Sure.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“No, but I’ve seen him.”
“I’d like to meet that fellow. He’s a fine writer. My wife don’t read English but she takes the paper just like when I was home and she cuts out the editorials and the sport page and sends them to me.”
“How are your kids?”
“They’re fine. One of the girls is in the fourth grade now. You know, Signor Tenente, if I didn’t have the kids I wouldn’t be your orderly now. They’d have made me stay in the line all the time.”
“I’m glad you’ve got them.”
“So am I. They’re fine kids but I want a boy. Three girls and no boy. That’s a hell of a note.”
“Why don’t you try and go to sleep.”
“No, I can’t sleep now. I’m wide awake now, Signor Tenente. Say, I’m worried about you not sleeping though.”
“It’ll be all right, John.”
“Imagine a young fellow like you not to sleep.”
“I’ll get all right. It just takes a while.”
“You got to get all right. A man can’t get along that don’t sleep. Do you worry about anything? You got anything on your mind?”
“No, John, I don’t think so.”
“You ought to get married, Signor Tenente. Then you wouldn’t worry.”
“I don’t know.”
“You ought to get married. Why don’t you pick out some nice Italian girl with plenty of money. You could get any one you want. You’re young and you got good decorations and you look nice. You been wounded a couple of times.”
“I can’t talk the language well enough.”
“You talk it fine. To hell with talking the language. You don’t have to talk to them. Marry them.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You know some girls, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Well, you marry the one with the most money. Over here, the way they’re brought up, they’ll all make you a good wife.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think about it, Signor Tenente. Do it.”
“All right.”
“A man ought to be married. You’ll never regret it. Every man ought to be married.”
“All right,” I said.
