OK, this was a long time in coming, but I've been dealing with papers, a new semester shcedule, and what have you. Hopefully I can make up for lost time!
* * *
I have to come to this war hating everyone. The enemy, of course, because they want to kill me. My fellow soldiers because I have to hate them first, before they hate me. It is a simple preemptive strike. Even my parents, offering me up as a sacrifice. “But look!” They can say, when the English round up the German-blood in their borders, “we have a son on the front! We are good Englishmen!”
But hate is exhausting, and my guts could remain knotted for only so long. The enemy is never seen, and the other soldiers aren’t so bad. Most of them hardly even care that I’m German-blood. It’s a mean little existence, and friends are welcome. Here is a good way to make friends. I go up to a soldier, anyone. I say “Hey mate, wanna win some cigarettes?” Usually, he is up for it, so then I explain the rules: “We light a cigarette, and then hold our hands above the trench. Whoever can hold it up longest without getting their hand shot off or losing their nerve, gets two cigarettes.” Obviously, it is not about the cigarettes. There are much easier ways to get cigarettes without risking a hand for one single cigarette! If the other man is up for it, we play the game. Some men like to chat while we do it, and I am usually up for that. Some men are quiet, hands trembling. Sometimes, in the quiet moments, I imagine what the Germans see, looking out into the No Man’s Land. Fireflies. Or the view through the scope. Maybe he thinks it’s one person, with two hands held up. Maybe certain snipers like to shoot left or right hands more. I don’t know. I always hold up my left. Only a few times has someone been shot while doing this with me. It’s not something I like to think about. And it’s doubly dangerous, because getting shot in the hand is terrible, and also they might be accused of fishing for a blighty one. Then they could get court-marshaled. But you can learn a lot about a person during this, even if they are silent. And it’s a good way to make friends.
This man decides to take a few breaths of his cigarette before he lifts it up. I just light it and hold it up, in my left hand.
“So, You ever kill someone?” He asks after a few moments. “It’s John, right?” I’m always up to talk.
“Yes, my name is John. I have killed someone.”
The ground is wet, which feels rotten. It is not a nice place, this war.
The other man grunts.
“Not all they say it is, is it?”
“Killing? I didn’t enjoy it, if that’s what you mean.” I have the urge to bring the cigarette down to my lips, which I resist.
“I didn’t expect to enjoy it,” He says. “I expected… vindication. This was shortly after Louvain. I feel like I’ve aged a lot since then. Anyway, it’s silly to think of now, but I expected that the people, that the town, would just spring back up again, because of this dead man. But, you know…”
“It’s powerless.”
“Yes. It’s a powerless act. A desperate act. So that’s why I’m here. Signed on to avenge a lot of dead people and just got more killed. Why are you here?”
“My last name is Wagner.”
“Ah. Boche name. No offense.”
“None taken. They thought it would prove their loyalty.”
“Hmmm.”
He takes his hand down, idly stares at it, almost surprised.
“Well, you win this one.” He pulls out a couple cigarettes and offers them to me. I retreat my own hand and take them.
“Thanks for the game.” I say. He nods. He turns and walks down the trench, carefully hunched, away to bed or some other night men. I wonder if I want to get shot. It is a lot of risk. Maybe I just hope I want to get shot because then I am in the right place. I was never the imaginative sort in school. I know a lot of men here can manipulate their memory: they forget there’s an enemy, or home, and can just kind of wake up everyday and see the world and think there’s nothing more. But I remember warm baths and I fear the enemy through the fog. It’s a very grim existence here.
But not without its wonders. I hear tell that Peter Wallace is back, in the RAP. Everyone thought he was dead.
Conrad sits by the Regimental Aid Post, waiting for the doctor to let him in to see Peter. But it is Peter himself who comes out, hunched, curled into himself as if he were still out on the front lines. Conrad reaches out to him.
“Good morning, sir. What are you doing out of bed?” He peers into the RAP to find the doctor, but he is tending another patient.
“He let me out. The doctor. Conrad. Your name is Conrad. You shot me!”
“Here, sir, stand up.” Conrad bent to lift him up out of his crouched position, and pulled the other up, who unfolded loosely.
“Yes, sorry about that shot. You seem to have recovered quickly.”
“The doctor says it was kind bullet.”
Conrad stares at him.
“Yes, well, friendly fire and all that.” There is a pause.
“Do you not remember me?” Conrad asks. Peter seems to think a moment.
“Conrad, of course I remember you. You… are a friend of the family. You take care of me.
“Right, then. Close enough. Where have you been? Everyone thought you were dead.”
“I have been trapped. In the no man’s land.”
“Well, sir, I’m glad you’re back with us. And I’m sorry again about the shot.”
“No, it was accident, like you say. I understand. Conrad. You carried me home when I broke my leg when I was ten!”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then you… Oh I see.”
“All coming back, is it? Come on, let’s get you back up there.”
Conrad leads the way, along the communications trench, facing forward and letting his words drift back, like exhaust.
“This is bad, bad, but China was worse! The air was thick with sweat and water, and the sun was roasting! We had to march 120 kilometers in that weather, with the Chinese everywhere… No, if you’re going to fight a war, this is the way to do it, I say, sitting down…” He turns to check on Peter, who seems to be following ably. “Of course, back then we fought with the Germans, side by side, but even then you could smell the Hun within them. After the shooting war was over, they were raping and looting… Horrible, horrible. Should have got them earlier, can’t believe we had to wait for some Serbian to start things of for everyone…”
James watches the two go by, sitting in the lip of a dugout, amazed. Peter escaping death twice now… It scares James, shakes him down to his bones. He lights a cigarette and plants it in the mud, burning tip pointing up, letting time go by, watching it slowly burn down to ashes.
Chapter Two
Sleep is a terrifying surrender, and I am not always ready to give up. As I lie here, I wonder – will it be gas? Maybe some soldier on patrol will carry it in here, on his boots, and our ignorant sleeping mouths will usher it inside. Or maybe a shell, knocking a portion of the trench down, burying us. Would I want to wake for those last few moments as I was crushed and suffocated? Or remain asleep, never to know. There is no antagonism in sleep. Lifting my hand over the trench wall, I can feel in direct contact with the enemy, I can feel powerful, in a way. But lying here to sleep there is no challenge and no combat. Just my consciousness spread thinner and more thin, dissipating…
I find it natural to wonder about this body’s death. How did it happen? When did it happen? Was he aware of his doom, or was it a shock? But the memory is being terribly secretive about the subject. These memories are wrapped up in wards of surprise and shame and guilt and justice. Not something a body wants to think about, I suppose, it’s own ending. And there are endless fascinations here. Sometimes I feel sorry for you, wrapped up in the mean physical process of the body as you are, unable to enjoy the perceptions of the mind. But you seem happy enough, and so we remain in our separate realms. Well, death may be cut off from me, but on the subject of life the mind is quite loquacious. Here is a memory.
From the hill we watched the shelling of the town, anxious, powerless, waiting for the bombardment to stop. One man taught me how to make a whistle out a blade of grass, and we tried to match the sound of the falling shells. All morning we laughed at the inaccuracy of the German’s shots, their shells coming down in front and behind, but never hitting anything important. Imagine how our laughter melted into horror as dragons rose from those craters, scales glinting malevolence, looping high into the air only to circle back, mouths wide, breathing a wilting breath, yellow-grey. From the horizon they flew toward us, their breath carrying upon it a struggling tide of runners, throwing aside clothes, equipment, everything to lighten their feet and outrun the tides of gas. Some rushed past us, and some were swallowed into the cloud, and some fell at our feet, mouths frothing. We stood there, dumbfounded for a moment. Conrad was the first to come to his senses and grabbed my arm, pulling me away from the fallen form, the grass strand I had clutched in my hand swirling as it twirls and floats down to the ground.
* * *
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Friday, November 03, 2006
Day Three
This one took a little more time! School, friends, you know how it is. Enjoy!
* * *
He dreams.
Years ago, James awoke. He still lived in a dirty little slot that smelled of piss and blood and smoke, still had to pull rat feces out of his hair every morning, still kissed the small photograph of his sister he carried with him. Watching the sergeant move from sleeping form to sleeping form, he readied his rifle, carefully attaching the bayonet to the tip, and checked his gear, then joined the mass of men lining themselves up for the stand to. Every morning they did this, readied themselves and their weapons for killing, and waited. Today James was jostled into a knee high pool of water, which quickly soaked through his clothes and boots. Their trench ran through the remains of a forest, the ground now covered in splinters and uneven planks. When James first arrived here, some of the woods remained, and from where he stood he would have been able to see copses, clumps of tenacious life. But now there was nothing, an endless field of twisted stumps. From where he stood, he could see how men had come to these and marked them, knives etching the names of lovers or wives, curses against the enemy, exultations for the homeland, little symbols of faith and superstition, remembrances for the dead.
The rising sun alighted, like a bird, on the end of his bayonet, and then, in a magic moment, he realized it was in fact a bird, scaled feet curled around the sharp tip, the sun a thing on its back, it’s wings folded at its sides. He unconsciously angled his arms, compensating for the greater weight. It moved its head in quick bobs, its neck like a snake. James wondered where it had come from. The trees were all felled, the ground was a churning wound; there was no place to nest, to rest. It seemed so natural there, pecking at the metal it stood on, testing it, it seemed. James quietly pressed this image into his mind, standing there in the dawn over the shattered husk of earth, watching this live thing live before him. He froze it, carefully pushed into the back of his mind, so as not to exhaust its wonder, to keep it safe and unspoiled for he didn’t know what, for when he was blind, or faced with horror, or simply forgot the world in old age. He slid it slowly next to watching his baby sister try to catch the sun in water, her small fist always dipping deeply into the stream which caused the light to break into so many small pieces, until she learned to cup her hands underneath and pull upwards, a small pool in her folded palms, the light quivering upon it. And she showed it to him and then drank it, and said “The light is inside me, the sun is inside.”
And, the moment properly stored, James shook his rifle gently, and softly cooed, wanting to drive the bird away before any of the men around him made sight of it and caught it, roasted it, consumed it. It clutched tightly for a few moments, alarmed, and then, resigned, unfolded itself and spiraled away, back over the trenches, disappearing into the sky. He hoped it would be safe.
There was no raid at dawn, from either side, and James unfastened his bayonet with particular care.
The men then set about killing their most oppressive foe: time. The soldiers filtered themselves out, some assigned to manning the front, some to cleaning, some to maintaining the trenches. Unbusy men met together to talk, or smoke. Some men sit alone, reading letters sent to them, or prepare correspondences of their own, read books, try to sleep, simply stare at the sky. Some souls formed black hand gangs, readying themselves to go over the edge, for reasons only they or the generals knew. James gravitated into the periphery of a group of men loudly talking.
“It’s about the omens, gentlemen. The guts of the hare, the flight of the bird. But everything out here is dead. How are we to go on? The earth is an exploded thing, a beast so engorged with metal and hate that it has burst. There are no signs, no symbols. Inauspicious, is the term. We exist here, naked and alone, on inauspicious ground, making our own way into blackness.”
“I saw a bird.” The words are pulled from James’ throat. “This morning.”
“Alive?” The man asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s your name, man?”
“James.”
“Well then, James. Come sit by me for our next card game. Perhaps the bird’s luck still holds power over you.”
James went and sat, and the other introduced himself as David Kitchner.
“Irish?” He asked.
“British.” James answered. “Ulster.”
The other man nodded. “Well, British. Do you know how to play?”
James described himself as a quick study and the others began. James sat and watched everyone, able to see David’s hand, the faces of the royals, the suits on the corners. David won the hand, collecting some money and cigarettes. James was ushered into the game, while the other men laughed nervously about the good luck he had brought David. The cards were dealt again and James collected his own handful. A bottle was passed around. James studied his cards. Both suicide kings were in his hand. Suddenly, James felt a fist of fear squeeze in his heart. He thought of omens, of the bird that had visited him. As he laid his coins on the table, he felt as if small pieces of his life fell from his fingers and onto the betting pile. Something in the men. They were different. James watched the pile in the middle of them grow, and as it became plump with his life energies, the others grew greedier, lustful. They laughed loudly and clutched their cards tight. The cards in his own hand seemed like pitiful protection, poor, unfed soldiers. Desperation closed on him, held him in its jaws. He looked over his cards again, but he knew there was no way to win. He couldn’t bear to quit, throwing more and more of himself into the pile, until, drained, depleted, exhausted, he lay his cards down. It was David again who won, sweeping the pile to himself with a wide arm. The other men mumbled about “bird’s luck” and left the game, afraid of losing more. James sat with David alone.
“I guess the that’s it for today,” He said, standing. He paused, as if to contemplate the trench around him. “Thanks for the help, British. Do you smoke?” James nodded mutely. David pulled a handful of cylinders out from the pile.
“I can’t stand the things. Here.” James slowly pulled them out of his fist, one by one.
“It was nice meeting you. Take care. And come play cards anytime.” David made his way down the trench. James remained sitting, suddenly aware of the dampness of his seat. The churned landscape remained in front of him. The low rumble of artillery continued to sound. Harsh odors burned his nose. He felt as if a light had been switched back on. He felt as if he should follow the other as if he owed him… Something. James shook his head and lit one of the cigarettes. The smoke tasted like life to him.
The doctor is surprised to examine our shoulder. I may have overdone it: I tried to leave enough superficial damage that it might throw him off, but maybe my own vanity undid me. I like this body, this flesh, having all the muscles and tendons and veins working properly and beautifully, whole. And he says it’s amazing, the bullet must have just missed everything, amazing, but I don’t need further medical care and I am fit for duty. He is rubbing his head, fingers weaving in with his hair.
I am realizing that the mind is no camera, spitting out black and white landscapes, portraits. Memories are constellations of symbols, images, ideas, smells, concepts, grievances, secrets; the mind a clear night sky. I see this man, this doctor, and inside him are elements of those Peter has seen him heal, seen him save, just above his outline floats an aura of other lives. You should thank him. He did pull out that invasive, shattering bullet.
“Thank you.” The vocal cords do their work.
He looks at us strangely. He feels our shoulder again, taking it in both hands. The fingers kneading the flesh. It is painful. I communicate this with our face.
“Well, I can’t explain it,” he says, finally. “Some bullets are kinder than others, I suppose. Get out of here. I have real wounded to attend to.”
And for the first time, I am aware that yes, there are other people lying here, their bodies in various states of disrepair, damage. What must it be like, to suffer the disobedience of your own body? Commands ignored, desires irrelevant or destroyed. Such a complex mechanism, made up of thousands of interlocking parts. And not only elements of your own body! Inside this vessel, I am aware of so many stowaways, tiny tiny inside, doing so many things to keep the body moving, whole. It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it, to be a habitat. As squatters ourselves it’s strange to consider what we might be cohabitating with. Well, let’s mind the neighbors – the last thing we need to deal with is running the entire body ourselves.
The muscles have their own minds, have you noticed this? There is an innate tenseness in the limbs, always prepared to throw the body down, to hide and curl up in case the artillery gets close. The abdomen bends automatically, keeping the head always under the lip of the trench, afraid of a sniper’s bullet. Oh. That is a fear. The brain, dismantled, and us caught in the confines of its ravels. We will stay low then, and listen to the muscles. They have experience.
* * *
* * *
He dreams.
Years ago, James awoke. He still lived in a dirty little slot that smelled of piss and blood and smoke, still had to pull rat feces out of his hair every morning, still kissed the small photograph of his sister he carried with him. Watching the sergeant move from sleeping form to sleeping form, he readied his rifle, carefully attaching the bayonet to the tip, and checked his gear, then joined the mass of men lining themselves up for the stand to. Every morning they did this, readied themselves and their weapons for killing, and waited. Today James was jostled into a knee high pool of water, which quickly soaked through his clothes and boots. Their trench ran through the remains of a forest, the ground now covered in splinters and uneven planks. When James first arrived here, some of the woods remained, and from where he stood he would have been able to see copses, clumps of tenacious life. But now there was nothing, an endless field of twisted stumps. From where he stood, he could see how men had come to these and marked them, knives etching the names of lovers or wives, curses against the enemy, exultations for the homeland, little symbols of faith and superstition, remembrances for the dead.
The rising sun alighted, like a bird, on the end of his bayonet, and then, in a magic moment, he realized it was in fact a bird, scaled feet curled around the sharp tip, the sun a thing on its back, it’s wings folded at its sides. He unconsciously angled his arms, compensating for the greater weight. It moved its head in quick bobs, its neck like a snake. James wondered where it had come from. The trees were all felled, the ground was a churning wound; there was no place to nest, to rest. It seemed so natural there, pecking at the metal it stood on, testing it, it seemed. James quietly pressed this image into his mind, standing there in the dawn over the shattered husk of earth, watching this live thing live before him. He froze it, carefully pushed into the back of his mind, so as not to exhaust its wonder, to keep it safe and unspoiled for he didn’t know what, for when he was blind, or faced with horror, or simply forgot the world in old age. He slid it slowly next to watching his baby sister try to catch the sun in water, her small fist always dipping deeply into the stream which caused the light to break into so many small pieces, until she learned to cup her hands underneath and pull upwards, a small pool in her folded palms, the light quivering upon it. And she showed it to him and then drank it, and said “The light is inside me, the sun is inside.”
And, the moment properly stored, James shook his rifle gently, and softly cooed, wanting to drive the bird away before any of the men around him made sight of it and caught it, roasted it, consumed it. It clutched tightly for a few moments, alarmed, and then, resigned, unfolded itself and spiraled away, back over the trenches, disappearing into the sky. He hoped it would be safe.
There was no raid at dawn, from either side, and James unfastened his bayonet with particular care.
The men then set about killing their most oppressive foe: time. The soldiers filtered themselves out, some assigned to manning the front, some to cleaning, some to maintaining the trenches. Unbusy men met together to talk, or smoke. Some men sit alone, reading letters sent to them, or prepare correspondences of their own, read books, try to sleep, simply stare at the sky. Some souls formed black hand gangs, readying themselves to go over the edge, for reasons only they or the generals knew. James gravitated into the periphery of a group of men loudly talking.
“It’s about the omens, gentlemen. The guts of the hare, the flight of the bird. But everything out here is dead. How are we to go on? The earth is an exploded thing, a beast so engorged with metal and hate that it has burst. There are no signs, no symbols. Inauspicious, is the term. We exist here, naked and alone, on inauspicious ground, making our own way into blackness.”
“I saw a bird.” The words are pulled from James’ throat. “This morning.”
“Alive?” The man asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s your name, man?”
“James.”
“Well then, James. Come sit by me for our next card game. Perhaps the bird’s luck still holds power over you.”
James went and sat, and the other introduced himself as David Kitchner.
“Irish?” He asked.
“British.” James answered. “Ulster.”
The other man nodded. “Well, British. Do you know how to play?”
James described himself as a quick study and the others began. James sat and watched everyone, able to see David’s hand, the faces of the royals, the suits on the corners. David won the hand, collecting some money and cigarettes. James was ushered into the game, while the other men laughed nervously about the good luck he had brought David. The cards were dealt again and James collected his own handful. A bottle was passed around. James studied his cards. Both suicide kings were in his hand. Suddenly, James felt a fist of fear squeeze in his heart. He thought of omens, of the bird that had visited him. As he laid his coins on the table, he felt as if small pieces of his life fell from his fingers and onto the betting pile. Something in the men. They were different. James watched the pile in the middle of them grow, and as it became plump with his life energies, the others grew greedier, lustful. They laughed loudly and clutched their cards tight. The cards in his own hand seemed like pitiful protection, poor, unfed soldiers. Desperation closed on him, held him in its jaws. He looked over his cards again, but he knew there was no way to win. He couldn’t bear to quit, throwing more and more of himself into the pile, until, drained, depleted, exhausted, he lay his cards down. It was David again who won, sweeping the pile to himself with a wide arm. The other men mumbled about “bird’s luck” and left the game, afraid of losing more. James sat with David alone.
“I guess the that’s it for today,” He said, standing. He paused, as if to contemplate the trench around him. “Thanks for the help, British. Do you smoke?” James nodded mutely. David pulled a handful of cylinders out from the pile.
“I can’t stand the things. Here.” James slowly pulled them out of his fist, one by one.
“It was nice meeting you. Take care. And come play cards anytime.” David made his way down the trench. James remained sitting, suddenly aware of the dampness of his seat. The churned landscape remained in front of him. The low rumble of artillery continued to sound. Harsh odors burned his nose. He felt as if a light had been switched back on. He felt as if he should follow the other as if he owed him… Something. James shook his head and lit one of the cigarettes. The smoke tasted like life to him.
The doctor is surprised to examine our shoulder. I may have overdone it: I tried to leave enough superficial damage that it might throw him off, but maybe my own vanity undid me. I like this body, this flesh, having all the muscles and tendons and veins working properly and beautifully, whole. And he says it’s amazing, the bullet must have just missed everything, amazing, but I don’t need further medical care and I am fit for duty. He is rubbing his head, fingers weaving in with his hair.
I am realizing that the mind is no camera, spitting out black and white landscapes, portraits. Memories are constellations of symbols, images, ideas, smells, concepts, grievances, secrets; the mind a clear night sky. I see this man, this doctor, and inside him are elements of those Peter has seen him heal, seen him save, just above his outline floats an aura of other lives. You should thank him. He did pull out that invasive, shattering bullet.
“Thank you.” The vocal cords do their work.
He looks at us strangely. He feels our shoulder again, taking it in both hands. The fingers kneading the flesh. It is painful. I communicate this with our face.
“Well, I can’t explain it,” he says, finally. “Some bullets are kinder than others, I suppose. Get out of here. I have real wounded to attend to.”
And for the first time, I am aware that yes, there are other people lying here, their bodies in various states of disrepair, damage. What must it be like, to suffer the disobedience of your own body? Commands ignored, desires irrelevant or destroyed. Such a complex mechanism, made up of thousands of interlocking parts. And not only elements of your own body! Inside this vessel, I am aware of so many stowaways, tiny tiny inside, doing so many things to keep the body moving, whole. It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it, to be a habitat. As squatters ourselves it’s strange to consider what we might be cohabitating with. Well, let’s mind the neighbors – the last thing we need to deal with is running the entire body ourselves.
The muscles have their own minds, have you noticed this? There is an innate tenseness in the limbs, always prepared to throw the body down, to hide and curl up in case the artillery gets close. The abdomen bends automatically, keeping the head always under the lip of the trench, afraid of a sniper’s bullet. Oh. That is a fear. The brain, dismantled, and us caught in the confines of its ravels. We will stay low then, and listen to the muscles. They have experience.
* * *
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Day Two
*Whew* the next one's finished!
Enjoy!
* * *
Here is something I am learning. Words, taken individually, are nothing.
“Who”
“Are”
“You”
“Oh”
“God”
“Peter”
“I”
“Thought”
And so on. Focusing on individual words as they come is madness, meaninglessness. Like snowflakes, they melt into the air before you can make out each one’s uniqueness. You have to accumulate them, stockpile them, let them whirl in a blizzard and pile up in your head, drifts and waves, a tundra, an entire landscape, until each element is an indistinguishable facet of the whole. And then you can look back at the glittering expanse and see yes, there is meaning here, yes this is something manufactured and whole. A dive into the memory stirs a thousand images and scenes, shared secrets and confidences. This man’s name is Conrad. Conrad Beckett. He puts down his rifle and takes our shoulder gently in his hands, tending a garden of blossoming nerve responses. He is checking to see if we are alive, and I realize that we have not responded, groaned, motioned, made any evidence at all there is something, indeed, inside this body.
Say something!
“Ungh.” Oh, that’s wonderful! That sound, so bestial! It sounds so real, not a carefully engineered rumble of the vocal cords.
“Oh, thank God. I thought I killed you! Can you hear me?”
We nod, neck muscles tighten and loosen, tighten and loosen. Eyes pinched shut as if in pain. What a strange thing, to be here, now, experiencing all the data fed into this brain, carefully selecting the responses, maintaining the façade. The brain is an invaluable help, and before me flash memories of all the people Peter has seen in pain throughout his life, his family and friends, small injuries of the toe or finger, dog bites and driving accidents, soldiers blown open and ripped apart, their final faces pressed into memory forever.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to get help. I’ll be back.” Conrad has wrapped some cloth around the shoulder, and it hurts, it is urgent, the nerves are saying. See to this immediately. So let’s just lie back and look at the stars. How many do you think there are? A joke of course; we already know. Seeing them through lensed eyes is new though, and the subtle scratches and scars tear the light like paper, making the plain orbs flicker and stretch outward. How odd, to see them this way. Now that I am settling into this body, going through the memories, learning what is typical and what is outlandish, I realize what a strange existence we have found ourselves in. The smell, for example, filling the nostrils with the scent of dead and decaying bodies, waste, mud, cigarettes, bodily odors. The very trench we lie in, the threat of harm and death it protects us from, the land we are in and the reason this body is here, so far removed from what is ordinary, normal, from what this body expected when it was sucked into this life.
Conrad returns with others and a stretcher, and we are pulled onto it, our weight in other’s hands, and they tell us how everything is going to be all right, but I can already notice the effect of the wound. Can’t you feel it? As the blood pumps into the cloth, organs shut down, muscles grow slack. Keep the eyes open! I want to see what happens. Through the trenches they carry us, along the communications trench, into a tent full of blood and bile and metal, and we are slid onto a slab big enough for us. A man approaches with a knife and I realize that he intends to cut into our shoulder, look into our body! No no, he won’t see us if we stay up here, safe away from the shoulder and the bullet and now a lump of leather is being forced into our mouth, bite down he says and we bite down, tongue exploring the newcomer with tentative touches and long strokes. And now the knife is inside us, inside us, a tooth, incisor, eating away the bad thing inside us, the bad thing… It swallows the bullet, and he is away, the doctor, and I race down there into the shoulder to tie the ligaments together, to bind the arteries and strands that maintain function, sensation, locomotion. I am not ready to lose this body, so newly claimed, to lose this mind, so full and unknown! The doctor insists we remain there, in his tent, to rest, to heal, to recover. This body agrees, and so let us pull ourselves into the brain – where all the activity is during sleep – and surrender to that sweet process, and, briefly, return this body to itself.
Chapter One
He has seen it, just seen it, still has the blood on his hands. He reaches over and wipes them off on sandbags, feeling the rough particles scrape his hands clean. One of our own, one of our own, shot by one of our own. It grows to the proportions of a children’s rhyme in his head:
One of our own,
One of our own,
Shot by one of our own,
In this muddy land his fate has been sown,
In this muddy land he defaults on life’s loan
One of our own,
One of our own,
Shot by one of our own.
He shakes his head to banish the verse. He isn’t even supposed to be awake. He was roused by the shot and Conrad’s cries for help, lending his aid to Peter… Strange one. He has seen many men take a bullet, or shrapnel in the leg, and all had cried out or clawed at the wound or moved against themselves, but Peter just lay there and looked up at the stars and let his good arm be folded onto his chest. He pulls the sheet up to his chin. There is really only one way to respond to this environment, he thinks, clearing his mind. His ambition is to carry away in small spoonfuls the barriers within his mind, to secure in sleep some kind of escape.
James Carson has lived on dreams since he was a boy. He remembered when his father signed the Covenant, and he had sat in the corner and recited it to himself under his breath, feeling as if angels were behind him, coaxing and binding him to the words:
“Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognize its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names.” And he imagined the roll of names, hundreds of thousands of names stretching over the horizon, sturdy hearts and willing hands for the King, and his own heart sturdy and his own hands willing along with them.
He remembered, just years ago, his father, who had laughter like a bag of coins, showing him how to work the German gun that had come in from Larne.
“And after she’s loaded, you wait. Wait until the nationalists come for our homes, for our wives and sisters and daughters. Wait until they come to destroy the Empire and rebel against the King and blaspheme against the Lord. And then you line them up in your sights, right along here, and pull your finger back gently.” And the bullet tore open the feather pillow his father had propped up against the stone and it spewed feathers into the air, but without wings they all drifted back down to the grass, where they became matted with mud and ground into the earth. And he had thrilled to imagine the feathers flying out of the nationalists, and how the mud would be red and thick. But the nationalists never came, and never came, and then the war came.
It was never a question within him. King and country needed him, Ulster needed him. The battle for Ireland would not take place in Ireland no, it called its soldiers across the waters and across the land, called them to prove their might to God on the fields of France, to buy their rights with German blood, with their own courage.
So now here he was, staring down the barrels of those same guns he had trained with, readied with, acquired the means to protect his own with. Those that now tore flesh and spirit, cleaving the two apart, leaving heavy ragged bodies on the ground and in the trenches, worse when it was longer, when the bullet shattered not the full manacle but a single link in the chain that binds body to soul, and for the next days, weeks even, successive links were undone as the spirit flew ever higher, until the final connection breaks, and the inner light flies away forever. And so at night he batters within himself against himself, struggling to pull open the silver doors that divide within his mind. He wants a British Ireland. He wants to see his parents again. He wants to see beyond the barbed wire and the machine guns. He wants to dream and in dreaming be free.
* * *
Good night!
Enjoy!
* * *
Here is something I am learning. Words, taken individually, are nothing.
“Who”
“Are”
“You”
“Oh”
“God”
“Peter”
“I”
“Thought”
And so on. Focusing on individual words as they come is madness, meaninglessness. Like snowflakes, they melt into the air before you can make out each one’s uniqueness. You have to accumulate them, stockpile them, let them whirl in a blizzard and pile up in your head, drifts and waves, a tundra, an entire landscape, until each element is an indistinguishable facet of the whole. And then you can look back at the glittering expanse and see yes, there is meaning here, yes this is something manufactured and whole. A dive into the memory stirs a thousand images and scenes, shared secrets and confidences. This man’s name is Conrad. Conrad Beckett. He puts down his rifle and takes our shoulder gently in his hands, tending a garden of blossoming nerve responses. He is checking to see if we are alive, and I realize that we have not responded, groaned, motioned, made any evidence at all there is something, indeed, inside this body.
Say something!
“Ungh.” Oh, that’s wonderful! That sound, so bestial! It sounds so real, not a carefully engineered rumble of the vocal cords.
“Oh, thank God. I thought I killed you! Can you hear me?”
We nod, neck muscles tighten and loosen, tighten and loosen. Eyes pinched shut as if in pain. What a strange thing, to be here, now, experiencing all the data fed into this brain, carefully selecting the responses, maintaining the façade. The brain is an invaluable help, and before me flash memories of all the people Peter has seen in pain throughout his life, his family and friends, small injuries of the toe or finger, dog bites and driving accidents, soldiers blown open and ripped apart, their final faces pressed into memory forever.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to get help. I’ll be back.” Conrad has wrapped some cloth around the shoulder, and it hurts, it is urgent, the nerves are saying. See to this immediately. So let’s just lie back and look at the stars. How many do you think there are? A joke of course; we already know. Seeing them through lensed eyes is new though, and the subtle scratches and scars tear the light like paper, making the plain orbs flicker and stretch outward. How odd, to see them this way. Now that I am settling into this body, going through the memories, learning what is typical and what is outlandish, I realize what a strange existence we have found ourselves in. The smell, for example, filling the nostrils with the scent of dead and decaying bodies, waste, mud, cigarettes, bodily odors. The very trench we lie in, the threat of harm and death it protects us from, the land we are in and the reason this body is here, so far removed from what is ordinary, normal, from what this body expected when it was sucked into this life.
Conrad returns with others and a stretcher, and we are pulled onto it, our weight in other’s hands, and they tell us how everything is going to be all right, but I can already notice the effect of the wound. Can’t you feel it? As the blood pumps into the cloth, organs shut down, muscles grow slack. Keep the eyes open! I want to see what happens. Through the trenches they carry us, along the communications trench, into a tent full of blood and bile and metal, and we are slid onto a slab big enough for us. A man approaches with a knife and I realize that he intends to cut into our shoulder, look into our body! No no, he won’t see us if we stay up here, safe away from the shoulder and the bullet and now a lump of leather is being forced into our mouth, bite down he says and we bite down, tongue exploring the newcomer with tentative touches and long strokes. And now the knife is inside us, inside us, a tooth, incisor, eating away the bad thing inside us, the bad thing… It swallows the bullet, and he is away, the doctor, and I race down there into the shoulder to tie the ligaments together, to bind the arteries and strands that maintain function, sensation, locomotion. I am not ready to lose this body, so newly claimed, to lose this mind, so full and unknown! The doctor insists we remain there, in his tent, to rest, to heal, to recover. This body agrees, and so let us pull ourselves into the brain – where all the activity is during sleep – and surrender to that sweet process, and, briefly, return this body to itself.
Chapter One
He has seen it, just seen it, still has the blood on his hands. He reaches over and wipes them off on sandbags, feeling the rough particles scrape his hands clean. One of our own, one of our own, shot by one of our own. It grows to the proportions of a children’s rhyme in his head:
One of our own,
One of our own,
Shot by one of our own,
In this muddy land his fate has been sown,
In this muddy land he defaults on life’s loan
One of our own,
One of our own,
Shot by one of our own.
He shakes his head to banish the verse. He isn’t even supposed to be awake. He was roused by the shot and Conrad’s cries for help, lending his aid to Peter… Strange one. He has seen many men take a bullet, or shrapnel in the leg, and all had cried out or clawed at the wound or moved against themselves, but Peter just lay there and looked up at the stars and let his good arm be folded onto his chest. He pulls the sheet up to his chin. There is really only one way to respond to this environment, he thinks, clearing his mind. His ambition is to carry away in small spoonfuls the barriers within his mind, to secure in sleep some kind of escape.
James Carson has lived on dreams since he was a boy. He remembered when his father signed the Covenant, and he had sat in the corner and recited it to himself under his breath, feeling as if angels were behind him, coaxing and binding him to the words:
“Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened calamity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us, we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognize its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right, we hereto subscribe our names.” And he imagined the roll of names, hundreds of thousands of names stretching over the horizon, sturdy hearts and willing hands for the King, and his own heart sturdy and his own hands willing along with them.
He remembered, just years ago, his father, who had laughter like a bag of coins, showing him how to work the German gun that had come in from Larne.
“And after she’s loaded, you wait. Wait until the nationalists come for our homes, for our wives and sisters and daughters. Wait until they come to destroy the Empire and rebel against the King and blaspheme against the Lord. And then you line them up in your sights, right along here, and pull your finger back gently.” And the bullet tore open the feather pillow his father had propped up against the stone and it spewed feathers into the air, but without wings they all drifted back down to the grass, where they became matted with mud and ground into the earth. And he had thrilled to imagine the feathers flying out of the nationalists, and how the mud would be red and thick. But the nationalists never came, and never came, and then the war came.
It was never a question within him. King and country needed him, Ulster needed him. The battle for Ireland would not take place in Ireland no, it called its soldiers across the waters and across the land, called them to prove their might to God on the fields of France, to buy their rights with German blood, with their own courage.
So now here he was, staring down the barrels of those same guns he had trained with, readied with, acquired the means to protect his own with. Those that now tore flesh and spirit, cleaving the two apart, leaving heavy ragged bodies on the ground and in the trenches, worse when it was longer, when the bullet shattered not the full manacle but a single link in the chain that binds body to soul, and for the next days, weeks even, successive links were undone as the spirit flew ever higher, until the final connection breaks, and the inner light flies away forever. And so at night he batters within himself against himself, struggling to pull open the silver doors that divide within his mind. He wants a British Ireland. He wants to see his parents again. He wants to see beyond the barbed wire and the machine guns. He wants to dream and in dreaming be free.
* * *
Good night!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Day One!
I have just spent a wonderful few hours writing with my friends. I present to you now the result, the first 1669 words of my NaNo! If it is hard to read in the blog I suggest copying it to word and double-spacing it.
Thanks for reading!
Enjoy!
* * *
No, not this one. He’s too torn up: you can see the coils of his intestines, now raveled and gracefully unspooled over the ground, tangled in the dirt and the debris of the abused earth. Keep looking. No, just follow me. Follow my voice. It’s all you have now, isn’t it? Well, let’s focus on finding a vessel for now.
Ah, this looks promising. Epidermis mostly intact, innards within, good, good… We can fix this one with just a little knitting. Here. Pick an orifice. Through the mouth – all right, follow me. Dodge the scrape of the enamel teeth, don’t be disgusted by the pink dry mass of the tongue; these will soon be our allies, from the curled fingers to the curling arteries, bones and skin, blood and water, our chariot. Up, then, squeeze through these narrow canals and channels, until here it is… That grey mound, intricate fists pressed together that command fists intricately, all ridges and valleys, the piercing spearhead of evolution. Sink into it, spreading your form wider and wider, less solid, let it soak you in like a sponge…
And here we are. Inside. At the controls. Whatever that spark of life once was that animated this frame, we must now furiously pump the bellows that it abandoned, let our labor give this corpse that which once came to it so easily. Try it. Reach beyond yourself, into yourself –
Whoa!
Feel that? The way the wind moves through the air, predatory currents that chase dust and looming thermals that lift it up, a whole invisible environment communicated to us through the semaphore of our shifting sheen of hair. And the hair! Feel it, feel it pushing through the skin – our skin! – pushing and growing and feeling that world. The world which carries to our tongue molecules of- our tongue! That lifeless thing, now sparked afire with the sensations of taste – dirt and blood, and the flavors carried by the windborne riders.
And all this, lying here, simply lying here! Dig a bit deeper and-
Movement! What is movement but purpose, the result of a decision made for some goal, the goal of movement, one glorious action where the purpose behind it and the action itself are the one and the same! Feel that purpose as the digits spread, in the articulation of the elbows, pushing away the ground. Oh my. Feel the purpose in the balance maintained by the minute shifting of all the muscles, the harmony and the glory of this simple, continual, constant act. Staying upright contains such a will, such a will! Oh, what desire rages inside the body always – the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, to pump, inflate, filter urine! The urge to urinate! And now! That warm, wet stimulation of the nerves as the stain spreads, the acrid odor – and, what’s this? Some new sensation, bubbling up from within. Shame, yes, and relief and shame again. Our habitation itself shudders with feeling. And behind all this, attaching significance to everything, underlying everything, memory lies.
Yes, this is where we must go next. This is the most difficult part, that which most eludes our control. Here, you guide the body, avoid tripping on the corpses and craters, make your way home, step by step.
Oh. Swirling around me, pressing against me, memories big and small, organized not by time but by urgency, beating against me, things that live only as they live, that rely on their constant observation. I don’t know what will help us. Here is what cries the loudest.
Well, they have picked the men, and I am one. An unusual case everyone calls it, most unusual. But desertion is a crime, and even Walters cannot save this one. That I have been chosen for this task is repugnant to me, a perversion. I stand here, now, the familiar weight in my hands, the rifles distributed amongst us, and the man tied to a post. His crimes are read. Insubordinance, cowardice, desertion. The punishment for which is death by firing squad. Thankfully, I don’t know him. I don’t think any of us do, which I am grateful for and yet seems a great injustice. I have heard that they load one of the rifles with a blank in these circumstances, and I desperately wish it is in my own. To imagine – to come to this war for your country, with the blood of the enemy in mind, and forced to shoot one of your own – no matter the crime! I look at this man and can only see a man. Think of him eating, fighting, making love. I see his bound hands and feel that I am bound. But now the call comes and I lift my arms while his remain locked, exercise my will while his remains restrained. There are six of us, yet I hear only five blasts – for a moment I am horrified that I am the one who shirked, and then when I see the smoke ribboning out of my rifle, and the slumped body beyond, I am horrified to realize I am not. I throw my rifle down and walk away quickly, contemplating only the recoil of the shot, the precise noise that sounded from the gun. I could have had the blank. I did. The rifle was weaker in my arms, softer than usual. No, I saw the holes. I couldn’t have done it. But I did. Except that I didn’t. I can feel the lines being drawn in my mind – trenches like the ones I live in and fight for, the constant battle that is my life, recreated in my mind with one life in the center. Except that instead of being my own this life is that of another, one whose existence I barley brushed, but whose nonbeing I helped define. The battle rages on.
Adjacent to this scene, personal information, emotions, colors. We are in a man named Peter Wallace. Against this memory Peter has cast this one.
The sun is high in a clear blue sky, an unbitter electric bulb. These French names all run together, but I know that we are near the front. Children play in a fountain like a square of the sky, throwing things into the air that gleam as they crest their apex, and send glittering constellations of drops into the air as they land, amid the laughing and the beauty of these children, in long clothes with long hair, tied back or free. These arcs multiply, narrow parabolas that begin in a child’s hand and end in the shine of the water, and I see that they are throwing limes. Oval fruits, yellow and green, pinched ends so beautiful in the clear light and water. And beyond them I see limes in the streets, stacked into piles against the houses, rolling along, pushed by dogs’ noses and playful feet. And then through the town, behind it, I see the trees, orchards of orchards, row after row of lime trees, with the wind in their leaves. And then I hear the thunder of the guns, German artillery out of sight, their blasts a gentle rumble of the earth, echoed as weakened stems give way and the citrus falls, some split and send their warm scent through the air, and others just nestle in the grass, until the children run through and laugh in glee and pick up the fruit from the earth, or let it fall into their hands, or just stand under the trees with their arms held out as if feeling the rain. The guns rumble and shake the trees and the fruits fall softly. And above, the sun throws its brightness over everything, turning the children’s hair into halos and the limes into emeralds, and it is so beautiful I choke and run into that field, and feel the shapes of the fallen limes beneath my feet and smell my steps as each footfall breaks them open, and standing there in the steam of life rising from the ground I feel the power of the guns through the earth and the weight of the fruit falling on my shoulders.
That memory is braced against the other, a weight and a counterweight, like scaffolding holding a mine shaft open, so Peter can move on through. He may have to crouch, and he may have to be wary of falling rocks, but he can move underneath the weight of that space, supported. I know where home is, and I know what dangers to avoid. Steer the feet that way, step around the rows of wire. Home is a trench, a scratch in the earth. We are lucky it is dark or we would have been felled by now. Crouch, get low. I don’t want our body, so new, to be so quickly broken. There it is, there is home, that gash. Come on, speed up, hop inside.
And now a new sense is stimulated, almost to the point of excess – the bones of the inner ear vibrate, translate, sound! The mind – our incredible host - can not only understand the vibrations as they are but hold them against an enormous catalogue of such experiences, telling us eventually that this we are hearing is the roar of a rifle.
This information is reinforced by the nerves in our shoulder, transmuting to us such a sensation! Commands to the region lock up, instructions never reach their destination – the arm twitches at our side. What is it about the pressure of a finger against the flesh that can transform a caress into cut, that turns simple feeling into spectacular pain? And it is this pain – spectacular to be sure – that pulses through our shoulder, and it is the combination of sound and feeling that inform the body it has been shot. The strong smell of new blood in our nostrils, and sudden velocity of gravity grips our legs as they give way and we tumble into the trench and into the man that shot us.
* * *
Good night!
Thanks for reading!
Enjoy!
* * *
No, not this one. He’s too torn up: you can see the coils of his intestines, now raveled and gracefully unspooled over the ground, tangled in the dirt and the debris of the abused earth. Keep looking. No, just follow me. Follow my voice. It’s all you have now, isn’t it? Well, let’s focus on finding a vessel for now.
Ah, this looks promising. Epidermis mostly intact, innards within, good, good… We can fix this one with just a little knitting. Here. Pick an orifice. Through the mouth – all right, follow me. Dodge the scrape of the enamel teeth, don’t be disgusted by the pink dry mass of the tongue; these will soon be our allies, from the curled fingers to the curling arteries, bones and skin, blood and water, our chariot. Up, then, squeeze through these narrow canals and channels, until here it is… That grey mound, intricate fists pressed together that command fists intricately, all ridges and valleys, the piercing spearhead of evolution. Sink into it, spreading your form wider and wider, less solid, let it soak you in like a sponge…
And here we are. Inside. At the controls. Whatever that spark of life once was that animated this frame, we must now furiously pump the bellows that it abandoned, let our labor give this corpse that which once came to it so easily. Try it. Reach beyond yourself, into yourself –
Whoa!
Feel that? The way the wind moves through the air, predatory currents that chase dust and looming thermals that lift it up, a whole invisible environment communicated to us through the semaphore of our shifting sheen of hair. And the hair! Feel it, feel it pushing through the skin – our skin! – pushing and growing and feeling that world. The world which carries to our tongue molecules of- our tongue! That lifeless thing, now sparked afire with the sensations of taste – dirt and blood, and the flavors carried by the windborne riders.
And all this, lying here, simply lying here! Dig a bit deeper and-
Movement! What is movement but purpose, the result of a decision made for some goal, the goal of movement, one glorious action where the purpose behind it and the action itself are the one and the same! Feel that purpose as the digits spread, in the articulation of the elbows, pushing away the ground. Oh my. Feel the purpose in the balance maintained by the minute shifting of all the muscles, the harmony and the glory of this simple, continual, constant act. Staying upright contains such a will, such a will! Oh, what desire rages inside the body always – the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, to pump, inflate, filter urine! The urge to urinate! And now! That warm, wet stimulation of the nerves as the stain spreads, the acrid odor – and, what’s this? Some new sensation, bubbling up from within. Shame, yes, and relief and shame again. Our habitation itself shudders with feeling. And behind all this, attaching significance to everything, underlying everything, memory lies.
Yes, this is where we must go next. This is the most difficult part, that which most eludes our control. Here, you guide the body, avoid tripping on the corpses and craters, make your way home, step by step.
Oh. Swirling around me, pressing against me, memories big and small, organized not by time but by urgency, beating against me, things that live only as they live, that rely on their constant observation. I don’t know what will help us. Here is what cries the loudest.
Well, they have picked the men, and I am one. An unusual case everyone calls it, most unusual. But desertion is a crime, and even Walters cannot save this one. That I have been chosen for this task is repugnant to me, a perversion. I stand here, now, the familiar weight in my hands, the rifles distributed amongst us, and the man tied to a post. His crimes are read. Insubordinance, cowardice, desertion. The punishment for which is death by firing squad. Thankfully, I don’t know him. I don’t think any of us do, which I am grateful for and yet seems a great injustice. I have heard that they load one of the rifles with a blank in these circumstances, and I desperately wish it is in my own. To imagine – to come to this war for your country, with the blood of the enemy in mind, and forced to shoot one of your own – no matter the crime! I look at this man and can only see a man. Think of him eating, fighting, making love. I see his bound hands and feel that I am bound. But now the call comes and I lift my arms while his remain locked, exercise my will while his remains restrained. There are six of us, yet I hear only five blasts – for a moment I am horrified that I am the one who shirked, and then when I see the smoke ribboning out of my rifle, and the slumped body beyond, I am horrified to realize I am not. I throw my rifle down and walk away quickly, contemplating only the recoil of the shot, the precise noise that sounded from the gun. I could have had the blank. I did. The rifle was weaker in my arms, softer than usual. No, I saw the holes. I couldn’t have done it. But I did. Except that I didn’t. I can feel the lines being drawn in my mind – trenches like the ones I live in and fight for, the constant battle that is my life, recreated in my mind with one life in the center. Except that instead of being my own this life is that of another, one whose existence I barley brushed, but whose nonbeing I helped define. The battle rages on.
Adjacent to this scene, personal information, emotions, colors. We are in a man named Peter Wallace. Against this memory Peter has cast this one.
The sun is high in a clear blue sky, an unbitter electric bulb. These French names all run together, but I know that we are near the front. Children play in a fountain like a square of the sky, throwing things into the air that gleam as they crest their apex, and send glittering constellations of drops into the air as they land, amid the laughing and the beauty of these children, in long clothes with long hair, tied back or free. These arcs multiply, narrow parabolas that begin in a child’s hand and end in the shine of the water, and I see that they are throwing limes. Oval fruits, yellow and green, pinched ends so beautiful in the clear light and water. And beyond them I see limes in the streets, stacked into piles against the houses, rolling along, pushed by dogs’ noses and playful feet. And then through the town, behind it, I see the trees, orchards of orchards, row after row of lime trees, with the wind in their leaves. And then I hear the thunder of the guns, German artillery out of sight, their blasts a gentle rumble of the earth, echoed as weakened stems give way and the citrus falls, some split and send their warm scent through the air, and others just nestle in the grass, until the children run through and laugh in glee and pick up the fruit from the earth, or let it fall into their hands, or just stand under the trees with their arms held out as if feeling the rain. The guns rumble and shake the trees and the fruits fall softly. And above, the sun throws its brightness over everything, turning the children’s hair into halos and the limes into emeralds, and it is so beautiful I choke and run into that field, and feel the shapes of the fallen limes beneath my feet and smell my steps as each footfall breaks them open, and standing there in the steam of life rising from the ground I feel the power of the guns through the earth and the weight of the fruit falling on my shoulders.
That memory is braced against the other, a weight and a counterweight, like scaffolding holding a mine shaft open, so Peter can move on through. He may have to crouch, and he may have to be wary of falling rocks, but he can move underneath the weight of that space, supported. I know where home is, and I know what dangers to avoid. Steer the feet that way, step around the rows of wire. Home is a trench, a scratch in the earth. We are lucky it is dark or we would have been felled by now. Crouch, get low. I don’t want our body, so new, to be so quickly broken. There it is, there is home, that gash. Come on, speed up, hop inside.
And now a new sense is stimulated, almost to the point of excess – the bones of the inner ear vibrate, translate, sound! The mind – our incredible host - can not only understand the vibrations as they are but hold them against an enormous catalogue of such experiences, telling us eventually that this we are hearing is the roar of a rifle.
This information is reinforced by the nerves in our shoulder, transmuting to us such a sensation! Commands to the region lock up, instructions never reach their destination – the arm twitches at our side. What is it about the pressure of a finger against the flesh that can transform a caress into cut, that turns simple feeling into spectacular pain? And it is this pain – spectacular to be sure – that pulses through our shoulder, and it is the combination of sound and feeling that inform the body it has been shot. The strong smell of new blood in our nostrils, and sudden velocity of gravity grips our legs as they give way and we tumble into the trench and into the man that shot us.
* * *
Good night!
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