William Faulkner - A Fable

And this time (it was May again, the fourth one he had seen from beneath the brim of a steel helmet, the battalion had gone in again two days ago and he had just emerged from Corps Headquarters at Villeneuve Blanche) when he saw the vast black motor car again there was such a shrilling of N.C.O.s’ whistles and a clashing of presented arms that he thought at first it was full of French and British and American generals until he saw that only one was a general: the French one: then recognised them all: in the rear seat beside the general the pristine blue helmet as unstained and innocent of exposure and travail as an uncut sapphire above the Roman face and the unstained horizon-blue coat with its corporal’s markings, and the youth in the uniform now of an American captain, on the second jump seat beside the British staff-major, the runner half-wheeling without even breaking stride, to the car and halted one pace short then took that pace and clapped his heels and saluted and said to the staff-major in a ringing voice: ‘Sir!’ then in French to the French general—an old man with enough stars on his hat to have been at least an army commander: ‘Monsieur the general.’

‘Good morning, my child,’ the general said.

‘With permission to address monsieur the director your companion?’

‘Certainly, my child,’ the general said.

‘Thank you, my general,’ the runner said, then to the old Negro: ‘You missed him again.’

‘Yes,’ the old Negro said. ‘He aint quite ready yet. And dont forget what I told you last year. Send for me.’

‘And dont you forget what I told you last year too,’ the runner said, and took that pace backward then halted again. ‘But good luck to you, anyway; he doesn’t need it,’ he said and clapped his heels again and saluted and said again to the staff-major or perhaps to no one at all in the ringing and empty voice: ‘Sir!’

And that was all, he thought; he would never see either of them again—that grave and noble face, the grave and fantastic child. But he was wrong. It was not three days until he stood in the ditch beside the dark road and watched the lorries moving up toward the lines laden with what the old St Omer watchman told him were blank anti-aircraft shells, and not four when he waked, groaning and choking on his own blood until he could turn his head and spit (his lip was cut and he was going to lose two teeth—spitting again, he had already lost them—and now he even remembered the rifle-butt in his face), hearing already (that was what had waked, roused him) the terror of that silence.

He knew at once where he was: where he always was asleep or on duty either: lying (someone had even spread his blanket over him) on the dirt ledge hacked out of the wall of the tiny cave which was the ante-room to the battalion dugout. And he was alone: no armed guard sitting across from him as he realised now he had expected, nor was he even manacled: nothing save himself lying apparently free on his familiar ledge in that silence which was not only above ground but down here too: no telephonist at the switchboard opposite, none of the sounds—voices, movement, the coming and going of orderlies and company commanders and N.C.O.’s—all the orderly disorder of a battalion p.c. functioning normally in a cramped space dug forty feet down into the earth—which should have been coming from the dugout itself;—only the soundless roar of the massed weight of shored and poised dirt with which all subterrene animals—badgers and miners and moles—are deafened until they no longer hear it. His watch (curiously it was not broken) said 10:19, whether Ack Emma or Pip Emma he could not tell down here, except that it could not be, it must not be Pip Emma; he could not, he must not have been here going on twenty hours; the seven which Ack Emma would signify would already be too many. So he knew at least where they would be, the whole p.c. of them—colonel, adjutant, sergeant-major and the telephonist with his temporarily spliced and extended line—topside too, crouching behind the parapet, staring through periscopes across that ruined and silent emptiness at the opposite line, where their opposite German numbers would be crouching also behind a parapet, gazing too through periscopes across that vernal desolation, that silence, expectant too, alerted and amazed.

But he did not move yet. It was not that it might already be too late; he had already refused to believe that and so dismissed it. It was because the armed man might be in the dugout itself, guarding the only exit there. He even thought of making a sound, a groan, something to draw the man in; he even thought of what he would say to him: Dont you see? We dont know what they are up to, and only I seem to have any fears or alarms. If I am wrong, we will all die sooner or later anyway. If I am right and you shoot me here, we will all surely die . Or better still: Shoot me. I shall be the one man out of this whole four years who died calmly and peacefully and reposed in dry clothing instead of panting, gasping, befouled with mud to the waist or drenched completely in the sweat of exertion and anguish . But he didn’t do it. He didn’t need to. The dugout was empty also. The armed man might be at the top of the stairs instead of the foot of them but then there or thereabouts would be where the colonel and his orderly room and periscope were too; besides, he would have to face, risk the rifle somewhere and it wouldn’t matter where since it contained only (for him) one bullet while what he was armed with was capable of containing all of time, all of man.

He found his helmet at once. He would have no rifle, of course, but even as he dismissed this he had one: leaning against the wall behind the sergeant-major’s desk (oh yes, what he was armed with even equipped him at need with that which his own armament was even superior to) and yes, there it still was in the sergeant-major’s desk: the pass issued to him Monday to pass him out to Corps Headquarters and then back, so that he didn’t even expect to find a guard at the top of the fifty-two steps leading up and debouching into the trench: only the transubstantiated orderly room as he had foreknown—colonel, adjutant, sergeant-major, telephone periscopes and all, his speech all ready on his tongue when the sergeant-major turned and looked back at him.

‘Latrine,’ he said.

‘Right,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘Be smart about it. Then report back here.’

‘Yessir,’ he said and two hours later he was again among the trees from which he had watched the torches moving about the archie battery two nights ago; three hours after that he saw the three aeroplanes—they were S.E.5’s—in the sky which had been empty of aircraft for forty-eight hours now, and saw and heard the frantic uproar of shells above where the enemy front would be. Then he saw the German aeroplane too, watched it fly arrow-straight and apparently not very fast, enclosed by the pocking of white British archie which paced it, back across No-man’s Land, the three S.E.’s in their pocking of black hun archie zooming and climbing and diving at the German; he watched one of them hang on the German’s tail for what must have been a minute or two, the two aircraft apparently fastened rigidly together by the thin threads of tracer. And still the German flew steadily and sedately on, descending, descending now even as it passed over him and the battery behind—near—which he lurked opened on it in that frenzy of frantic hysterical frustration common to archie batteries; descending, vanishing just above the trees, and suddenly he knew where: the aerodrome just outside Villeneuve Blanche, vanishing sedately and without haste downward, enclosed to the last in that empty similitude of fury, the three S.E.5’s pulling up and away in one final zoom; and, as if that were not enough to tell him what he had to do, he saw one of them roll over at the top of its loop and, frozen and immobile, watched it in its plan as it dove, rushed straight down at the battery itself, its nose flicking and winking with the tracer which was now going straight into the battery and the group of gunners standing quietly about it, down and down past what he would have thought was the instant already too late to save itself from crashing in one last inextricable jumble into the battery, then levelling, himself watching the rapid pattering walk of the tracer across the intervening ground toward him until now he was looking directly into the flicking wink and the airman’s helmeted and goggled face behind and above it, so near that they would probably recognise one another if they ever saw each other again—the two of them locked in their turn for a moment, an instant by the thin fiery thread of a similitude of death (afterward he would even remember the light rapid blow against his leg as if he had been tapped rapidly and lightly once by a finger), the aeroplane pulling level and with a single hard snarling downward blast of air, zooming, climbing on until the roaring whine died away, he not moving yet, immobile and still frozen in the ravelling fading snarl and the faint thin sulphur-stink of burning wool from the skirt of his tunic.