‘You speak my tongue also.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the captain answered him. ‘No other Frenchman ever called it that.’
‘Do not demean yourself. You speak it well. What is your name?’
‘Middleton, sir.’
‘You have … twenty-five years, perhaps?’
‘Twenty-four, sir.’
‘Twenty-four. Some day you are going to be a very dangerous man, if you are not already so:’ and said to the corporal: ‘Thank you, my child. You may return to your squad,’ and spoke a name over his shoulder without turning his head, though the aide had already come around the table as the corporal about-faced, the aide flanking him back to the door and through it and out, the American captain turning his head back in time to meet for another second yet the quiet and inscrutable eyes, the courteous, bland, almost gentle voice: ‘Because his name is Brzonyi here too.’ He sat back in the chair; again he looked like a masquerading child beneath the illusion of crushing and glittering weight of his blue-and-scarlet and gold and brass and leather, until even the five who were still sitting had the appearance of standing too, surrounding and enclosing him. He said in English: ‘I must leave you presently, for a short time. But Major Blum speaks English. It is not as good as yours of course, nor as good as Captain Middleton’s French, but it should do; one of our allies—Colonel Beale—saw him slain, and the other—Captain Middleton—buried him, so all that remains for us is to witness to his resurrection, and none more competent for that than Major Blum, who was graduated from the Academy into the regiment in 1913 and so was in it before and has been in it ever since the day when this ubiquitous corporal reached it. So the only question is—’ he paused a second; it was as though he had even glanced about at them without even moving: the delicate and fragile body, the delicate face beautiful, serene, and terrifying ‘—who knew him first: Colonel Beale at Mons in August 1914, or Major Blum at Chalons in that same month—before of course Captain Middleton buried him at sea in 1917. But that is merely academic: identity—if there is such—has been established (indeed, it was never disputed): there remains only recapitulation, and Major Blum will do that.’ He stood up; except for the two generals, the others rose quickly too and although he said rapidly: ‘No no, sit down, sit down,’ the three newcomers continued to stand. He turned to the French major. ‘Colonel Beale has his ghostly bowmen in Belgium; at least we can match that with our archangels on the Aisne. Surely you can match that for us—the tremendous aerial shapes patrolling our front, and each time they are thickest, heaviest, densest, most archangelic, our corporal is there too perhaps, pacing with them—the usual night firing going on, just enough to make a sane man keep his head below the trench and be glad he has a trench to keep his head below, yet this corporal is outside the trench, between the parapet and the wire, pacing along as peacefully as a monk in his cloister while the great bright formless shapes pace the dark air beside and above him? or perhaps not even pacing but simply leaning on the wire contemplating that desolation like a farmer his turnip-field? Come, Major.’
‘My imagination wears only a majority, sir,’ the major said. ‘It cannot compete with yours.’
‘Nonsense,’ the old general said. ‘The crime—if any—is already established. If any? established? we did not even need to establish it; he did not even merely accept it in advance: he abrogated it. All that remains now is to find extenuation—pity, if we can persuade him to accept pity. Come, tell them.’
‘There was the girl,’ the major said.
‘Yes,’ the old general said. ‘The wedding and the wine.’
‘No sir,’ the major said. ‘Not quite now. You see, I can—how do you say?—démentir—contredire—say against——’
‘Contradict,’ the American captain said.
‘Thank you,’ the major said. ‘—contradict you here; my majority can cope with simple regimental gossip.’
‘Tell them,’ the old general said. So the major did, though that was after the old general had left the room—a little girl, a child going blind in one of the Aisne towns for lack of an operation which a certain famous Paris surgeon could perform, the corporal levying upon the troops of two nearby divisions, a franc here and two francs there until the surgeon’s fee was raised and the child sent to him. And an old man; he had a wife, daughter and grandson and a little farm in 1914 but waited too long to evacuate it, unable until too late to tear himself away from what he possessed; his daughter and grandson vanished in the confusion which ended at the First Marne battle, his old wife died of exposure on the roadside, the old man returning alone to the village when it was freed again and he could, where, an idiot, name forgotten, grief and all forgotten, only moaning a little, drooling, grubbing for food in the refuse of army kitchens, sleeping in ditches and hedgerows on the spot of earth which he had owned once, until the corporal used one of his leaves to hunt out a remote kinsman of the old man’s in a distant Midi village and levied again on the regiment for enough to send him there.
‘And now,’ the major said. He turned to the American captain. ‘How to say, touché?’
‘You’re out,’ the captain said. ‘And I wish he was still present so I could hear you say it to him.’
‘Bah,’ the major said. ‘He is a Frenchman. It is only a boche marshal that no man can speak to. And now, you’re out, from him to me. Because now the wedding and the wine—’ and told that—a village behind Montfaucon and only this past winter because they were American troops; they had just been paid, a dice game was going on, the floor littered with franc notes and half the American company crowded around them when the French corporal entered and without a word began to gather up the scattered money; for a time a true international incident was in the making until the corporal finally managed to communicate, explain, what it was about: a wedding: one of the young American soldiers, and a girl, an orphan refugee from somewhere beyond Rheims, who was now a sort of slavey in the local estaminet; she and the young American had—had——
‘The rest of his company would say he had knocked her up,’ the American captain said. ‘But we know what you mean. Go on.’ So the major did: the matter ending with the entire company not only attending the wedding but adopting it, taking charge of it, buying up all the wine in the village for the supper and inviting the whole countryside; adopting the marriage too: endowing the bride with a wedding gift sufficient to set up as a lady in her own right, to wait in her own single rented room until—if—her husband returned from his next tour in the lines. But that would be after the old general had left the room; now the three newcomers made way for him as he came around the table and paused and said:
‘Tell them. Tell them how he got the medal too. What we seek now is not even extenuation, not even pity, but mercy—if there is such—if he will accept that either,’ and turned and went on toward the small door: at which moment it opened and the aide who had taken the prisoner out stood at attention beside it for the old general to pass, then followed and closed the door behind them. ‘Yes?’ the old general said.
‘They are in De Montigny’s office,’ the aide said. ‘The youngest one, the girl, is a Frenchwoman. One of the older ones is the wife of a Frenchman, a farmer——’
‘I know,’ the old general said. ‘Where is the farm?’
‘Was, sir,’ the aide said. ‘It was near a village called Vienne-la-pucelle, north of St Mihiel. That country was all evacuated in 1914. On Monday morning Vienne-la-pucelle was under the enemy’s front line.’
‘Then she and her husband dont know whether they have a farm or not,’ the old general said.
‘No sir,’ the aide said.
‘Ah,’ the old general said. Then he said again: ‘Yes?’
‘The motorcar from Villeneuve Blanche has just entered the courtyard.’
‘Good,’ the old general said. ‘My compliments to our guest, and conduct him to my study. Serve his dinner there, and request his permission to receive us in one hour.’
The aide’
s office had been contrived three years ago by carpenters out of—or into—a corner of what had been a ballroom and then a courtroom. The aide saw it each twenty-four hours and obviously even entered it at least once during those periods because on a rack in the corner hung his hat and topcoat and a very fine beautifully-furled London umbrella, in juxtaposition to that hat and that coat as bizarre and paradox as a domino or a fan, until you realised that it could quite well have owed its presence there to the same thing which the only other two objects of any note in the room did: two bronzes which sat at either end of the otherwise completely bare desk—a delicate and furious horse poised weightless and epicene on one leg, and a savage and slumbrous head not cast, molded but cut by hand out of the amalgam by Gaudier-Brzeska. Otherwise the cubicle was empty save for a wooden bench against the wall facing the desk. When the old general entered, the three women were sitting on it, the two older ones on the outside and the younger one between them; as he crossed to the desk without yet looking at them, the younger one gave a quick, almost convulsive start, as though to get up, until one of the others stopped her with one hand. Then they sat again, immobile, watching him while he went around the desk and sat down behind the two bronzes and looked at them—the harsh high mountain face which might have been a twin of the corporal’s except for the difference in age, the serene and peaceful one which showed no age at all or perhaps all ages, and between them the strained and anguished one of the girl. Then, as though on a signal, as if she had waited for him to complete the social amenity of sitting too, the peaceful one—she held on her lap a wicker basket neatly covered by an immaculate tucked-in cloth—spoke.
‘I’m glad to see you, anyway,’ she said. ‘You look so exactly like what you are.’
‘Marya,’ the other older one said.
‘Dont be ashamed,’ the first one said. ‘You cant help it. You should be pleased, because so many dont.’ She was already rising. The other said again:
‘Marya,’ and even raised her hand again, but the first one came on to the desk, carrying the basket, beginning to raise her other hand as though to approach the basket with it as she reached the desk, then extending the hand until it lay on the desk. It now held a long-handled iron spoon.
‘That nice young man,’ she said. ‘At least you should be ashamed of that. Sending him out to tramp about the city at night with all those soldiers.’
‘The fresh air will be good for him,’ the old general said. ‘He doesn’t get much of it in here.’
‘You could have told him.’
‘I never said you had it. I only said I believed you could produce it when it was needed.’
‘Here it is.’ She released the spoon and laid that hand lightly on the one which held the tucked-in and undisturbed basket. Then immediately and peacefully but without haste she smiled at him, serene and uncritical. ‘You really cant help it, can you? You really cant.’
‘Marya,’ the woman on the bench said. Again immediately but without haste, the smile went away. It was not replaced by anything: it just went away, leaving the face unchanged, uncritical, serene.
‘Yes, Sister,’ she said. She turned and went back to the bench where the other woman had risen now; again the girl had made that convulsive start to rise too; this time the tall woman’s hard thin peasant hand was gripping her shoulder, holding her down.
‘This is——’ the old general said.
‘His wife,’ the tall woman said harshly. ‘Who did you expect it to be?’
‘Ah yes,’ the old general said, looking at the girl; he said, in that gentle inflectionless voice: ‘Marseilles? Toulon perhaps?’ then named the street, the district, pronouncing the street name which was its by-word. The woman started to answer but the old general raised his hand at her. ‘Let her answer,’ he said, then to the girl: ‘My child? A little louder.’
‘Yes sir,’ the girl said.
‘Oh yes,’ the woman said. ‘A whore. How else do you think she got here—got the papers to come this far, to this place, except to serve France also?’
‘But his wife too,’ the old general said.
‘His wife now,’ the woman corrected. ‘Accept that, whether you believe it or not.’
‘I do both,’ the old general said. ‘Accept that from me too.’ Then she moved, released the girl’s shoulder and came toward the desk, almost to it in fact, then stopping as though at the exact spot from which her voice would be only a murmur to the two still on the bench when she spoke:
‘Do you want to send them out first?’
‘Why?’ the old general said. ‘So you are Magda.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Not Marthe: Magda. I wasn’t Marthe until after I had a brother and had to cross half of Europe to face thirty years later the French general who would hold the refusal of his life. Not gift: refusal; and even that’s wrong: the taking back of it.’ She stood, tall, still, looking down at him. ‘So you even knew us. I was about to say “Not remembered us, because you never saw us”. But maybe that’s wrong too and you did see us then. If you did, you would remember us even if I wasn’t but nine then and Marya eleven, because as soon as I saw your face tonight I knew that it would never need to flee, hide from, fear or dread or grieve at having to remember anything it ever looked at. Marya might fail to see that maybe—Marya now too, since she also had to come all the way to France to watch the refusal of her half-brother’s life, even if she doesn’t need to fear or dread or grieve at having to remember either—but not I. Maybe Marya is why you remember us if you saw us then: because she was eleven then and in our country girls at eleven are not girls anymore, but women. But I wont say that, not because of the insult that would be even to our mother, let alone to you—our mother who had something in her—I dont mean her face—which did not belong in that village—that village? in all our mountains, all that country—while what you must have had—had? have—in you is something which all the earth had better beware and dread and be afraid of. The insult would have been to evil itself. I dont mean just that evil. I mean Evil, as if there was a purity in it, a severity, a jealousy like in God—a strictness of untruth incapable of compromise or second-best or substitute. A purpose, an aim in it, as though not just our mother but you neither could help yourselves; and not just you but our—mine and Marya’s—father too: not two of you but three of you doing not what you would but what you must. That people, men and women, dont choose evil and accept it and enter it, but evil chooses the men and women by test and trial, proves and tests them and then accepts them forever until the time comes when they are consumed and empty and at last fail evil because they no longer have anything that evil can want or use; then it destroys them. So it wasn’t just you, a stranger happened by accident into a country so far away and hard to get to that whole generations of us are born and live and die in it without even knowing or wondering or caring what might be on the other side of our mountains or even if the earth extends there. Not just a man come there by chance, having already whatever he would need to charm, trance, bewitch a weak and vulnerable woman, then finding a woman who was not only weak and vulnerable but beautiful too—oh yes, beautiful; if that was what you had had to plead, her beauty and your love, my face would have been the first to forgive you, since the jealousy would be not yours but hers—just to destroy her home, her husband’s faith, her children’s peace, and at last her life,—to drive her husband to repudiate her just to leave her children fatherless, then her to die in childbirth in a cow-byre behind a roadside inn just to leave them orphans, then at last have the right—privilege—duty, whatever you want to call it—to condemn that last and only male child to death just that the name which she betrayed shall be no more. Because that’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. It must be something much bigger than that, much more splendid, much more terrible: not our father gone all that long distance from our valley to seek a beautiful face to be the mother of his name’s succession, then finding instead the fatal and calamitous one which would end it; not you blundered
there by chance, but sent there to meet that beautiful and fatal face; not her so weak in pride and virtue, but rather doomed by that face from them;—not the three of you compelled there just to efface a name from man’s history, because who on earth outside our valley ever heard that name, or cares? but instead to create a son for one of you to condemn to death as though to save the earth, save the world, save man’s history, save mankind.’
She brought both hands up in front of her and let them rest there, the fist of one lying in the other palm. ‘Of course you knew us. My folly was in even thinking I would need to bring you proof. So now I dont know just what to do with it, when to use it, like a knife capable of only one stroke or a pistol with just one bullet, which I cant afford to risk too soon and dare not wait too late. Maybe you even know the rest of it already too; I remember how wrong I was that you would not know who we are. Maybe your face is telling me now that you already know the rest of it, end of it, even if you weren’t there, had served your destiny—or anyway hers—and gone away.’
‘Tell me then,’ the old general said.
‘—if I must? Is that it? the ribbons and stars and braid that turned forty years of spears and bullets, yet not one of them to stop a woman’s tongue?—Or try to tell you, that is, because I dont know; I was only nine then, I only saw and remembered; Marya too, even if she was eleven, because even then she already didn’t need to dread or grieve for anything just because her face had looked at it. Not that we needed to look at this because it had been there all our lives, most of the valley’s too. It was already ours, our—the valley’s—pride (with a little awe in it) as another one might have a peak or glacier or waterfall—that speck, that blank white wall or dome or tower—whatever it was—which was first in all our valley that the sun touched and the last that lost it, still holding light long after the gulch we crouched in had lost what little it had ever snared. Yet it wasn’t high either; high wasn’t the right word either; you couldn’t—we didn’t—measure where it was that way. It was just higher than any of our men, even herdsmen and hunters, ever went. Not higher than they could but than they did, dared; no shrine or holy place because we knew them too and even the kind of men that lived in, haunted, served them; mountain men too before they were priests because we knew their fathers and our fathers had known their grandfathers, so they would be priests only afterward with what was left. Instead, it was an eyrie like where eagles nested, where people—men—came as if through the air itself (you), leaving no more trace of coming or arriving (yes, you) or departing (oh yes, you) than eagles would (oh yes, you too; if Marya and I ever saw you then, we did not remember it, nor when you saw us if you ever did except for our mother’s telling; I almost said If our father himself ever saw you in the flesh because of course he did, you would have seen to that yourself: a gentleman honorable in gentleman fashion and brave too since it would have taken courage, our father having already lost too much for that little else to be dear spending), come there not to tremble on their knees on stone floors, but to think. To think: not that dreamy hoping and wishing and believing (but mainly just waiting) that we would think is thinking, but some fierce and rigid concentration that at any time—tomorrow, today, next moment, this one—will change the shape of the earth.