William Faulkner - A Fable

‘I am not afraid of man,’ the old general said. ‘Fear implies ignorance. Where ignorance is not, you do not need to fear: only respect. I dont fear man’s capacities, I merely respect them.’

‘And use them,’ the Quartermaster General said.

‘Beware of them,’ the old general said.

‘Which, fear them or not, you should. You someday will. Not I, of course. I’m an old man, finished; I had my chance and failed; who—what—wants or needs me further now? what midden or rubbish heap, least of all that one beside the Seine yonder with its gold hemisphere ravaged from across all of Europe by a lesser one than you since he embroiled himself with all the armies of Europe in order to lose a petty political empire where you have allied all the armies of both hemispheres and finally even the German one too, to lose the world to man.’

‘Will you let me speak a moment?’ the old general said.

‘Of course,’ the other said. ‘Didn’t I tell you I loved you once? Who can control that? All you dare assume mandate over is oath, contract.’

‘You say they do not need me to save themselves from me and us since they themselves will save themselves if they are only let alone, only defended and preserved that long from me and us. How do you think we coped with this in time at time and place—at this particular moment in four whole years of moments, at this particular point in that thousand kilometres of regimental fronts? just by being alert? not only alert at this specific spot and moment but prepared to cope and concentrate and nullify at this specific spot and moment with that which every trained soldier had been trained and taught to accept as a factor in war and battle as he must logistics and climate and failure of ammunition; this, in four long years of fateful and vulnerable moments and ten hundred kilometres of fateful and vulnerable spots—spots and moments fateful and vulnerable because as yet we have found nothing better to man them with than man? How do you think we knew in time? Dont you know how? who, since you believe in man’s capacities, must certainly know them?’

Now the other had stopped, immobile, looming, vast, his sick and hungry face as though sick anew with foreknowledge and despair. Though his voice was quiet, almost gentle. ‘How?’ he said.

‘One of them told us. One of his own squad. One of his close and familiar own—as always. As that or them or at least one among them for whom man sets in jeopardy what he believes to be his life and assumes to be his liberty or his honor, always does. His name was Polchek. He went on sick parade that Sunday midnight and we should have known about it inside an hour except that apparently a traitor too (by all means call him that if you like) had to outface regimental tape. So we might not have learned in time at all until too late, the division commander being himself already an hour before dawn in a forward observation post where he likewise had no business being, except for a lieutenant (a blatant and unregenerate eccentric whose career very probably ended there also since he held the sanctity of his native soil above that of his divisional channels; he will get a decoration of course but no more, the utmost venerability of his beard can only expose that same lieutenant’s insigne) who rang directly through to, and insisted on speaking to someone in authority at, his Army Headquarters. That was how we knew, had even that little time to nullify, get in touch with the enemy and offer him too an alternate to chaos.’

‘So I was right,’ the other said. ‘You were afraid.’

‘I respect him as an articulated creature capable of locomotion and vulnerable to self-interest.’

‘You were afraid,’ the Quartermaster General said. ‘Who with two armies which had already been beaten once and a third one not yet blooded to where it was a calculable quantity, had nevertheless managed to stalemate the most powerful and skillful and dedicated force in Europe, yet had had to call upon that enemy for help against the simple unified hope and dream of simple man. No, you are afraid. And so I am well to be. That’s why I brought it back. There it lies. Touch it, put your hand on it. Or take my word for it that it’s real, the same one, not defiled since the defilement was mine who shirked it in the middle of a battle, and a concomitant of your rank is the right and privilege to obliterate the human instrument of a failure.’

‘But can you bring it back here? to me?’ the old general said mildly.

‘Why not? Weren’t you the one who gave it to me?’

‘But can you?’ the old general said. ‘Dare you? ask me to grant you a favor, let alone accept it from me. This favor,’ the old general said in that gentle and almost inflectionless voice. ‘A man is to die what the world will call the basest and most ignominious of deaths: execution for cowardice while defending his native—anyway adopted—land. That’s what the ignorant world will call it, who will not know that he was murdered for that principle which, by your own bitter self-scoriation, you were incapable of risking death and honor for. Yet you dont demand that life. You demand instead merely to be relieved of a commission. A gesture. A martyrdom. Does it match his?’

‘He wont accept that life!’ the other cried. ‘If he does——’ and stopped, amazed, aghast, foreknowing and despaired while the gentle voice went on:

‘If he does, if he accepts his life, keeps his life, he will have abrogated his own gesture and martyrdom. If I gave him his life tonight, I myself could render null and void what you call the hope and the dream of his sacrifice. By destroying his life tomorrow morning, I will establish forever that he didn’t even live in vain, let alone die so. Now tell me who’s afraid?’

Now the other began to turn, slowly, a little jerkily, as though he were blind, turning on until he faced the small door again and stopping not as though he saw it but as if he had located its position and direction by some other and lesser and less exact sense, like smell, the old general watching him until he had completely turned before he spoke:

‘You’ve forgotten your paper.’

‘Of course,’ the other said. ‘So I have.’ He turned back, jerkily, blinking rapidly; his hand fumbled on the table top for a moment, then it found the folded paper and put it back inside the tunic, and he stood again, blinking rapidly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So I did.’ Then he turned again, a little stiffly still but moving almost quickly now, directly anyhow, and went on across the blanched rug, toward the door; at once it opened and the aide entered, carrying the door with him and already turning into rigid attention, holding it while the Quartermaster General walked toward it, a little stiffly and awkwardly, too big too gaunt too alien, then stopped and half-turned his head and said: ‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye,’ the old general said. The other went on, to the door now, almost into it, beginning to bow his head a little as though from long habit already too tall for most doors, stopping almost in the door now, his head still bowed a little even after he turned it not quite toward where the old general sat immobile and gaudy as a child’s toy behind the untouched bowl and jug and the still uncrumbled bread.

‘And something else,’ the Quartermaster General said. ‘To say. Something else——’

‘With God,’ the old general said.

‘Of course,’ the Quartermaster General said. ‘That was it. I almost said it.’

The door clashed open, the sergeant with his slung rifle entered first, followed by a private carrying his unslung one, unbelievably long now with the fixed bayonet, like a hunter dodging through a gap in a fence. They took position one on either side of the door, the thirteen prisoners turning their thirteen heads as one to watch quietly while two more men carried in a long wooden bench-attached mess table and set it in the center of the cell and went back out.