John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

The roof sagged steeply on the uphill side of the tent and standing on some of the crates I was able to slip my head through a hole in the fabric and look back down the slope. The sky was high and clear and as night fell a line of fires sprang up behind the tents where the sergeant’s body had been taken. Now I will remember him that way, I thought, picturing his black and running face. The family and the friends will remember him one way and I’ll remember him the other. I felt giddy thinking this. Wachmann’s face and the sight of his body as it died suddenly seemed a privileged and secret knowledge. Only I had seen it. The fusilier had seen something, perhaps, but I had seen the whole of it. Everything but the explosion. I thought again, more vaguely now, that I should have been there when the shell hit. I thought very briefly about a letter I’d gotten that morning with news about my father. The firelight looked beautiful thrown back onto the tents but I couldn’t picture myself going to them. A ringing and shuddering was passing through my body, rattling the crates under my feet, but I felt nothing unpleasant, only giddiness.

After a time it grew too cold to watch the fires any longer and I ducked my head inside and buried myself down in the coats until only my eyes and nose were showing. I lay very still, imagining being discovered by the Italians in the middle of the night. I thought about Wachmann again and how the snow had clung to his back like the bristles of a pig when we pulled him away from the wall. The wind grew louder and snow fluttered down steadily from the hole in the roof. Eventually I fell asleep.

When I woke my nose and eyelids were coated with drift but the rest of me was warm for the first time in weeks and I felt forgotten and content. I got up and went outside to piss; it was already late morning and blindingly bright. Down the hill I saw a ring of men in what looked to be Turkish uniforms talking quietly and smoking. When my vision cleared a little I recognized them by their peaked hats as our own Kaiser’s hussars. I went back into the tent and took up my rucksack and slid down the steep clear-cut slope toward the men. The drifts made the going slow and strenuous between the stumps, and I was a long time getting down; at one point I stumbled and tore the shoulder of my coat. I came out of a cluster of pines a few yards farther on and heard a shot at the same moment but by then it was too late to turn back. I looked up and saw a man in an open flannel shirt totter a few steps and then fall face-forward into the snow. A second or two later the man who had fired noticed me. He called to me to raise my arms and come slowly down the hill. The others turned round at this and watched me as I came. When I reached the even ground I laid my rucksack down, very gingerly, then raised my hands again. I hadn’t seen the man who had fallen clearly but I knew that he was not an Italian and that I was not going to make it anymore to the tents.

Two hussars came forward and led me by my elbows into the circle. They asked me the name of my battalion and my regiment and I told them. The officer with the pistol, a captain, gestured at my shoulder. How did that happen, Private? he asked.

Just now, sir. I fell.

How did you lose your battalion?

During the shelling, sir. I was feeder to a mustard-shell battery. The taps sergeant died.

The captain frowned. What taps-sergeant?

Taps Sergeant Wachmann, sir. A German.

Were you hit?

No sir.

There was silence for a moment. How did you lose your battalion? the captain said, as matter-of-factly as before. A shaking had begun along my left arm. The others were closer to me now and I could see the steam of their breath rising up behind the captain’s head. He was looking at me as a gymnasium teacher might to an able student and I wanted very much to tell him again about Wachmann and the fusilier and everything that had happened since but I saw in the same instant that he hadn’t put away his gun and the look on his face had changed. How did you lose your battalion, Private? he said again.

I stayed with the taps sergeant. At my position sir.

There was another silence. Someone sniggered.

Shoot this man, the captain said flatly, handing me his pistol.

The circle widened to show another man on his knees in the snow, stripped to his underclothes. Tears were running down his cheeks and guttering in his beard and in the folds of his face. I stood for a few seconds without moving or speaking. Who is he? I asked.

A deserter, said the captain. Behind me in the circle someone spat. A voice was screaming now behind my eyes, not my voice or the voice of any other living thing but a voice just the same, high and piercing as a steam jet. Things began to swim together. I took a half step backward to steady myself and felt a hand against the small of my back. I know you, said the man on the ground, tilting his head up toward me.

I stared down at the man. I know you, he repeated. He had stopped sobbing now and was looking up at me or at something just behind me with wide-open unblinking eyes. The thought entered my head for the smallest part of an instant that he was not talking to me at all, or to anyone in the circle, but directly to God. I know you, he said again, breaking into a smile.

Shut your mouth! screamed the officer. The scream was thin and bright like the noise that was sharpening each second behind my eyes and I drew back automatically. The man on the ground was staring at me and swaying from side to side as if in a rapture. Mucus clotted in his beard and on his lips. He made no motion either to raise himself or to lie back down onto the snow. He was raising his left arm to me, open-handed, as if asking me to help him onto his feet.

Do you know this man? said the captain, turning round to look at me.

No sir, I said. I raised the pistol and fired.

When he reached the front gate Maman was sitting exactly as she’d been when he had left her. As he came up the steps she sat forward with a start and he realized she’d been asleep. — You haven’t forgotten how to startle a body yet, she muttered.

— I’m sorry.

— Well. That’s all right.

He stood beside her awhile, looking up at the treeline. — Does old Ryslavy still run the Niessener Hof?

— No. Alban died last winter. Pauli runs it now.

— Pauli.

— He’s asked about you.

— How is he?

— Well. Knock on wood, Oskar.

He was quiet for a time. — When did this start happening, these changes? he asked. — How long ago?

She sighed quietly, more a contraction than a sound. — Nothing has really happened yet.

— But you’re worried about Pauli? Truly worried?

She shrugged. — He has a little girl.

He squinted again at the hillside, frowning slightly, remembering Pauli and Old Ryslavy and the Hof and his favorite table there, then all at once remembering his age, every year of it. Even the war seemed long ago.

— I did read your letters, Maman. I didn’t believe about the changes, that’s all. She watched him as he said this. He couldn’t make out her face in the dark but her head had turned toward him. He took a breath.

— There was so much exaggeration everywhere around us. This whole time. He paused. — I can’t explain it. We didn’t get very much news. Not much that was clear. There were rumors. I wanted to believe there had been changes. If there had been changes I could have come back. He paused a moment. — Or I wanted nothing to change, if you prefer. That could be. He laughed.

She looked at him. — How do things seem to you now?