Story was made as resoult of few men bet, sort of a test if you like. If you want to give any feedback, write it here.
It was late autumn, war was already raging for 3 years now. I remember that place because it is carved deep in to my memory. That small garden of a war hospital, so peaceful and so calm surrounded by wooden hills preserving it's look for centuries.
Day and night you could see army transporters hauling soldiers to the front lines while other ones were landing to bases with casualties of war, but the great madness raced through the town like a hurricane leaving behind only calmness.
Parks were full of children playing unmolested with the large leaves from old chestnut trees. Women stood gossiping in the front of the shops while young girls were washing windows disregarding hospital flags waving from almost every house, and innumerable bulletin boards, notices and sign-posts that the intruders had thrust upon the defenseless town. But peace still seemed to prevail here, even though war raged throughout the system, all thanks to the unimportance of the town. It was lost, forgotten almost magical, especially at night. Horizon illumination looked like artificial yet it was doing of the nature.
The streets were exchanging astonishing glances from the reflection of the night-lamps. Rooms were choking from misery, sending piercing shrieks, wails and groans out into the night. Every human sound coming through windows fell upon the silence like a furious attack
But the beautiful wrought-iron fountains continued to gurgle complacently, prattling with soothing insistence of the days of their youth, when men still had the time and the care for noble lines and curves, and war was affair of princes and adventurers. Legend popped out of every corner and every gargoyle, and ran on padded soles through all the narrow little streets, like an invisible gossip whispering of peace and comfort. And the ancient chestnut trees nodded assent, and with the shadows of their outspread fingers stoked the frightened facades to calm them. The past grew so lavishly out of the fissured walls that any one coming within their embrace heard the plasing of the fountains above the thunder of leaving transports and noise from hospital, and the sick and wounded men felt soothed and listened from their fevered couches to the talkative night outside. Pale men, who had been carried through the town on swinging stretchers, forgot the hell they had come from; and even the heavily laden victims tramping through the place on a forced march by night became softened for a space, as if they had encountered Peace and their own unarmed selves in the shadow of the flower-filled bay-windows.
At the other end of the town, on passing the last houses, it took a tender leave, quite tamed and subdued, murmuring very gently, as if treading on tiptoe, as if drowsy with all the dreaminess it had reflected. Between wide banks, it stepped out into the broad meadowland, and circled about the war hospital, making almost an island of the ground it stood on. Thick-stemmed sycamores cast their shadow on the hospital, and from three sides came the murmur of the garden, when twilight fell, was moved by compassion and sang a slumber song for the lacerated men, who had to suffer in rank and file, regimented up to their very death, up to the grave, into which they unfortunate cobblers, tinkers, peasants, and clerks were shoved to the accoumplaniment of salvos from big old mouthed cannon.
The sound of taps had just died away, and the watchmen were making their rounds, when they discovered three men in the deep shadow of the broad avenue, and drove them into the house.
Are you officers, eh? Said the head-watchmanPrivates must be in bed by nine o'clock Well, are you going or not?
He was about to give him unusual order, Quick, take to your legs! but caught himself just in time, and made a face as though he had swallowed something.
The three men now hobbling toward the entrance for inmates, would have been only too glad to carry out such an order. However, they had only two legs and six clattering crutches between them. It was like a living picture posed by stage manager who has an eye for symmetry. On the right went the one whose right leg had been saved, on the left went his counterpart, hopping on his left leg, and in the middle the miserable left-over of a human body swung between two high crutches, his empty trousers raised and pinned across his chest, so that the whole man could have gone comfortably into a cradle.
The corporal followed the group with his eyes, his head bent and his fists clenched, as if bowed down beneath the burden of the sight. He muttered a not exactly patriotic oath and spat out a long curve of saliva with a hiss from between his front teeth. As he was about to turn and go on his round again, a burst of laughter came from the direction of the officer wing. He stood still and drew in his head as if from a blow on the back of his neck, and a stream of hatred flitted over his broad, good-natured peasant face . He spat out again, to soothe his feeling, then took a fresh start and passed the merry company with a stiff salute.
The gentlemen returned the salute carelessly. Infected by the coziness that hung over the whole of the town like a light cloud, they were sitting chatting in front of hospital on benches moved together to form a square. They spoke of the war and laughed, laughed like happy schoolboys discussing the miseries. Each had done his duty, each had had his ordeal, and now, under the protection of his wound, each sat there in the comfortable expectation of returning home, of seeing his people again, of being feted, and for at least two whole weeks, of living the life of a man who is not tagged with a number.
The loudest of the laughers was the young lieutenant whom they had nicknamed the Mussulman because of the turban he wore as officer. A part of destroyed ship wrecked his fighter, and broke his leg, and done its work thoroughly. For weeks already the shattered limb had been tightly encased it carefully, as though it were some precious object that had been confided to his care.
On the bench opposite the Mussulman sat two gentlemen, wing commander, the only one on the active list, and a gunboat officer, who in civil life was a professor of philosophy, and so was called Philosopher for short. The wing commander had received a cut across his right arm, and the Pianist upper lip had been ripped by a Kusari pilot fighter, that shot down Pianist craft. Two ladies were sitting on the bench that leaned against the wall of the hospital, and these three men were monopolizing the conversation with them. The fourth man sat on his bench without speaking. He was lost in his own thoughts, his limbs twitched, and his eyes wandered unsteadily. In the war he was a lieutenant, in civil life a well-known composer. He had been brought to the hospital a week before, suffering from severe shock. Horror still gloomed in his eyes, and he kept gazing ahead of him darkly. He always allowed the attendants at the hospital to do whatever they wanted to him without resistance, and he went to bed or sat in the garden, separated from the others as by invisible wall, at which he stared and stared. Even the unexpected arrival of his pretty, fair wife had not resulted in dispelling for so much as a second the vision of the awful occurrence that had unbalanced his mind. With his chin on his chest he sat without smile, while she murmured words of endearment; and whenever she tried to touch his poor twitching hands with the tips of her fingers, full of infinite love, he would jerk away as if seized by convulsion, or under torture.
Tears rolled down the little woman cheeks cheeks hungry for attention. She had fought her way bravely through the zones barred to civilians until she finally succeeded in reaching this hospital in the military area. And now, after the great relief and joy of finding her husband alive, she suddenly sensed an enigmatic resistance, an unexpected obstacle, which she could not beg away or cry away, as she had used to do. There was something there that separated her mercilessly from the man she had so yearned to see.
She sat beside him impatiently, tortured by her powerlessness to find an explanation for the hostility that was around him. Her eyes pierced the darkness, and her hands always went the same way, groping forward timidly, quickly withdrawing as though scorched when his shrinking away in hatred threw her into despair again.
It was hard to have choke down her grief like this, and not burst out in reproach and tear this secret from her husband, which he in his misery still interposed so stubbornly between himself and his one support. And it was hard to simulate happiness and take part in the airy conversation; hard always to have to force some sort of a reply, and was easy enough for her. She knew that her husband, a major admiral, was safe now. She had fled from the ennui of a childless home to enter into eventful life of the war hospital.
The majors wife had been sitting in the garden with the gentlemen ever since seven oclock, always on the point of leaving, quite ready to go in her hat and jacket, but she let herself to be induced again and again to remain a little longer. She kept up her flirtatous conversation in the gayest of spirits, as if she had no knowledge of all the torments she had seen during the day in the very house against which she was leaning her back. The sad little woman breathed a sigh of relief when it grew so dark that she could move away from frivolous chatterbox unnoticed.
The Mussulman and the wing commander were chaffing the Philosopher and poking fun at the phrase-mongers, hair splitters, and other wasters of time. They took a childish delight in his broad smile of embarrassment at being teased in majors wife presence, and she, out of feminine politeness, came to the Pianist rescue, while casting looks at the others who could deal such pert blows with their tongues.
Oh, let the poor man alone She laughed and cooed Hes right. War is horrible. Those two gentlemen are just trying to get your temper up. She twinkled at the Philosopher to soothe him. His good nature made him so helpless.
The Philosopher grinned phlegmatically and said nothing. The Mussulman, setting his teeth, shifted his leg, which in its white bandage was the only part of him that was visible, and placed it in a more comfortable position on the bench.
The Philosopher? He laughed. As a matter of fact, what does the Philosopher know about war? Hes in gunboat, safe behind all armor, and all wings of fighters. And war is conducted by the fighters. Dont you know that, Mrs. ---?
I am not Mrs. Here I am sister Margaret she cut in, and for a moment the expression on her face became almost serious.
I beg your pardon, Sister Margaret. Fighters and big guns support, you see, are like husband and wife. We fighter pilots must bring the child into the world when a victory is to be born. The gunboats and rest of fleet, has only the pleasure, just like a mans part in love. It is not until after the child has been baptized that he comes strutting out proudly. Am I not right, Captain? he asked, appealing to the gunboat officer. You are an equally strained on foot now, too.
The captain boomed his assent. In his summary view, members of the Parliament who refused to vote enough money for the military, socialists, pacifists, all men, in brief, who lectured or wrote or spoke stuff and lived by their brains belonged in the same category as the Philosopher. They were all bookworms.
Yes, indeed, he said in his voice hoarse from shouting commands. A Philosopher like our friend here is just the right person for the right person for the commanding gunboat. Nothing to do but wait and drink, if only they dont shoot up our own men! It is easy enough to dispose of the fellows on the other side, in front of us. But I always have a devilish lot of respect for you assassins in the back. But lets stop talking about the war. Else I will go off to bed. Here we are at last with charming ladies, when its been an age since we have seen a face that isnt covered with dirt and blood, and you still keep talking of that damned shooting. Good Lord, when I was in the hospital transporter and the first girl came in with a white cap on her curly light hair, I'd have liked to hold her hand and just keep looking and looking at her. Upon my word of honor, Sister Margaret, after a while the shooting gets to be a nuisance. But the worst thing of all is the complete absence of the lovely feminine. For five months to see nothing but men and then all of a sudden to hear a dear clear woman voice! Thats the finest thing of all. Its worth going to war for.
The Mussulman pulled his mobile face flashing with youth into a grimace.
The finest thing of all! No sir. To be quite frank, the finest thing of all is to get a bath and a fresh bandage, and be put into clean white bed, and know that for a few weeks you are going to have a rest. Its feeling like well, theres no comparison for it. But, of course, it is very nice, too, to be seeing ladies again.
The Philosopher had tiled his fleshy Epicurean head to one side, and a moist sheen came into small crafty eyes. He glanced at the place where a bright spot in the almost palpable darkness suggested the lady Majors white dress, and began to tell what he thought very slowly in a slight sing-song.
The finest thing of all, I think, is the quiet when you have been lying, resting in the back of your gunboat. After all those fire it turns absolutely quiet no howling, no thundering nothing but a glorious quiet that you can listen to as to piece of music!
Wing commander sent his cigarette flying through the night like a comets scattering sparks, and brought his hand down with a thump on his knee.
There, there, Sister Margaret, did you get that? he cried sarcastically. Listen to no sound. You see, that is what is called philosophy. I know something better than that, Mr. Philosopher, namely, not to hear what you hear, especially when its such philosophical rubbish.
They laughed, and the man they were teasing smiled good-naturedly. He, too, was permeated by peacefulness that floated into garden from the sleeping town. The Commander's aggressive jokes glided off without leaving a sting, as did everything else that might have lessened the sweetness of the few days still lying between him and the front. He wanted to make the most of his time, and take everything easily with his eyes tight shut, like a child who has to enter a dark room.
So opinions differ as to what was the finest thing, she said; and her breath came more rapidly. But, tell me, what was the most awful thing you went throughout there? A lot of the men say that they cant get over the sight of the first man they saw killed. How about you?
The Philosopher looked tortured. It was a theme that didnt fit into his program. He was casting about for evasive reply when an unintelligible wheezing exclamation drew all eyes to the corner in which captain and his wife were sitting. The others had almost forgotten them in the darkness and exchanged frightened glances when they heard a voice that scarcely one of them knew, and the man with the glazed eyes and uncertain gestures, a marionette with broken joints, began to speak hastily in a falsetto like the crowing of rooster.
What was the most awful thing? The only awful thing is the going off. You go off to war and they let you go. Thats the awful thing.
A cold sickening silence fell upon the company. Even the Mussulmans face lost its perpetually happy expression and stiffened in embarrassment. It had come so unexpectedly and sounded so unintelligible. It caught them by the throat and set their pulses bounding perhaps because of the vibrating of the voice that issued from the twitching body, or because of the rattling that went along with it, and made it sound like a voice broken by long sobbing.
The Lady Major jumped up. She had seen the captain officer brought to the hospital strapped fast to the stretcher, because his sobbing wrenched and tore his body so that bearers couldnt control him otherwise. Something inexpressibly hideous so it was said had half robbed the poor devil of his reason, and the Lady Major suddenly dreaded a fit of insanity. She pinched the Commanders arm and exclaimed with a pretense of great haste:
My goodness! Theres the gong of the last transporter. Quick, quick, addressing the sick mans wife, quick! We must run.
They all rose. The Lady Major passed her arm through the unhappy little woman and urged with even greater insistence:
We'll have a whole hours walk back to town if we miss the transporter.
The little wife, completely at a loss, her whole body quivering, bent over her husband again to take leave. She was certain that his outburst had reference to her and held a grim deadly reproach, which she didnt comprehend. She felt her husband draw back and start convulsively under the touch of her lips. And she sobbed aloud at the awful prospect of spending an endless night in the chilly neglected room in the hotel, left alone with tormenting doubt. But the Lady Major drew her along, forcing her to run, and didnt let go her arm until they had passed the sentinel at the gate and were out on the street. The gentlemen followed them with their eyes, saw them reaper once again on the street in the lamplight, and listened to the sound of transporter receding in the distance. The Mussulman picked up his crutches, and winked at Philosopher significantly, and said something with a yawn about going to bed. The Commander looked down at the sick man curiously and felt sorry for him. Wanting to give the poor devil a bit of pleasure, he tapped him on his shoulder and said in his free and easy way:
You have got a chic wife, I must say. I congratulate you.
The next instant he drew back startled. The pitiful heap on the bench jumped up suddenly, as though a force just awakened had tossed him up from his seat.
Chic wife? Oh, yes. Very dashing! came sputtering from his twitching lips with a fury that cast out the words like a seething stream. She didnt shed a single tear when I left on transport vessel. Oh, they were all very dashing when we went off. Poor Dills wife was, too. Very plucky! She threw roses at him and she'd been his wife for only two months. He chuckled disdainfully and clenched his teeth, fighting hard to suppress the tears burning in his threat. Roses! He-he! And See you soon again! They were all so patriotic! Our lieutenant congratulated Dill because his wife had restrained herself so well as if he were simply going off to maneuvers.
The lieutenant was now standing up. He swayed on his legs, which he held wide apart, and supported himself on the Commander's arm, and looked up into his face expectantly with unsteady eyes.
Do you know happened to him to Dill? I was there. Do you know what?
The captain looked at the others in dismay.
Come on come on to bed. Dont excite yourself, he stammered in embarrassment.
With a howl of triumph the sick man cut his short and snapped in an unnaturally high voice:
You dont know happened to Dill, you dont? We were standing just the way we are now, and he was just going to show me the new photograph that his wife had sent him his brave wife, he-he, his restrained wife. Oh yes, restrained! Thats what they all were all prepared for anything. And while we were standing there, in transporter going to McDuff, when we run into one of mines. First hit blown to pieces our friend Dill, to some 28 of pieces. I was one of few man that survived that day.
He stopped for an instant for stared at the captain triumphantly. Then he went on with a note of spiteful pride in his voice, though every now and then interrupted by peculiar gurgling groan.
Poor Dill never said another word Dill with the spur sticking in his skull. He only turned up the whites of his eyes a little and looked sadly at his wifes picture, that she should have permitted such a thing as that. Such a thing as that! Such a thing!
Shut up! the captain yelled furiously, and tore himself away and walked into house cursing.
The other two looked after him longingly, but they couldnt let the unfortunate man stay there by himself. When the captain had withdrawn his arm, he had fallen down on the bench again and sat whimpering like a whipped child, with his head leaning on the back. The Philosopher touched his shoulder gently, and was about to speak to him kindly and induce him to go into house when he stood up again and broke out into ugly, snarling laugh.
The captain reappeared followed by the little assistant physician, who was on night duty.
You must go to bed now, officer, the physician said with affected severity.
The sick man threw his head up and stared blankly at the strange face. When the physician repeated the order in a raised voice, his eyes suddenly gleamed, and he nodded approvingly.
Must go, of course, he repeated eagerly and drew a deep sigh. We all must go. The man who doesnt go is a coward, and they have no use for a coward. Thats the very thing. Dont you understand? Heroes are the style now. The chic Mrs. Dill wanted a hero to match her new hat. Ha-Ha! Thats why poor Dill had to go and lose his brains. I, too you, too we must go die. You must let yourself be trampled on your brains trampled on, while the women look on chic because its the style now.
He raised his emaciated body painfully, holding on the back of bench, and eyed each man in turn, waiting for assent.
Isnt it sad? He asked softly. Then his voice rose suddenly to a shriek again, and the sound of his fury rang out weirdly in the garden. Werent they deceiving us, eh? I'd like to know? Was I an assassin? Didnt I suit her when I sat at the piano playing? We were expected to be gentle and considerate! Considerate! And all at once, because fashion changed, they had to have murderers. Do you understand? Murderers!
He broke away from physician, and stood swaying again, and his voice gradually sank to a complaining sound like the thick strangulated utterance of a drunkard.
My wife was in fashion too, you know. Not a tear! I keep waiting and waiting for her to begin to scream and beg me at last to get out of transporter, and not go with the others beg me to be a coward for her sake. Not one of them had courage to. They just wanted to be in fashion. Mine, too! Mine, too! She waved like all the rest.
His twitching arms writhed upwards, as though he were calling the heavens to witness.
You want to know what was the most awful thing? he groaned, turning to the Philosopher abruptly. The disillusionment was the most awful thing the going off. The war wasnt. The war is what is had to be. Did it surprise you to find out that war is horrible? The only surprising thing was the going off. To find out that the women are horrible that was the surprising thing. That they can smile and throw roses, that they can give up their men, their children, the boys they have put to bed a thousand times and pulled the covers over a thousand times, and petted and brought up to be men. That was the surprise! That they gave us up that they sent us sent us! Because every one of them would have been ashamed to stand there without a hero. That was the great disillusionment. Do you think we should have gone if they had not sent us? Do you think so? Just ask the stupidest peasant out there why he'd like to have a medal before going back on furlough. Because if he has a medal his girl will like him better, and the other girls will run after him, and he can use his medal to hook other men women away from under their noses. Thats the reason, the only reason. The women sent us. No general could have made us go if the women hadnt allowed us to be stacked on the transporter, if they had screamed out that they would never look at us again if we turned into murderers. Not a single man would have gone off if they had sworn never to give themselves to a man who has split open others men skulls and shot and kill. Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I didnt want to believe that they could stand it like that. They are only pretending I though. They are just restraining themselves. But when transport will start to going, they will begin to scream and tear us out of transporter, and rescue us Once they had the chance to protect us, but all they cared about was being in style nothing else in the world but just being in style.
He sank down on the bench again and sat as though he were all broken up. His body was shaken by low weeping, and his head rolled to and fro on his panting chest. A little circle of people had gathered behind his back. The old officer was standing beside the physician with four sentries ready to intervene at moments notice. All the windows in the officers wing had lighted up, and scantily clad figures leaned out, looking down into garden curiously.
The sick man eagerly scrutinized the indifferent faces around him. He was exhausted.
His hoarse throat no longer gave forth a sound. His hand reached out for help to the Philosopher, who stood beside him, all upset.
The physician felt the right moment had come to lead him away.
Come on, Lieutenant, lets go to sleep, he said with a clumsy affection of geniality. Thats the way women are once for all, and theres nothing to be done about it.
The physician wanted to go on talking and in conversing lure the sick into house unawares. But the very next sentence remained sticking in his throat, and he stopped short in amazement. The limp wobbing skeleton that only a moment before had sat there as in faint and left himself be raised up by the physician and the Philosopher, suddenly jumped up with a jerk, and tore his arms away so violently that the two men who were about to assist him were sent tumbling up against the others. He bent over with crooked knees, staggering like a man whos carrying a heavy load on his back. His veins swelled, and he panted with fury:
Thats the way women are once for all, are they? Since when, eh? Have you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of prime ministers, and set fire to museums, and let themselves to be chained to lamp-post for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you hear? but for the sake of their men? No. Not one sound. Not one single outcry!
He stopped to take breath, overcome by wild suffocating despair. Then he pulled himself together once more and with difficulty suppressing the sobs, which keep brining a lump into his throat, he screamed in deepest misery like a hunted animal:
Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of transporter for the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them boxed the ears of the prime minister or tied herself. There wasnt one that had to be torn away. Not one fought for us or defended us. Not one moved a little finger for us in the whole Bretonia. They drove us out! They gagged us! They gave us spur, like poor Dill. They have sent us to murder, they sent us to die for their vanity. Are you going to defend them? No! They must be pulled out!
He flung out his arm and his fist came down like a hammer on his own skull, and his crooked fingers clutched pitilessly at the sparse growth of hair on the back of his head, until he held up a whole handful torn out by the roots, and howled with pain.
The doctor gave a sign, and the next moment the four sentries were on him, panting. He screamed, gnashed his teeth, beat about him, kicked himself free, shook off his assailants like burrs. It was not until the old officer and the doctor came to their assistance that they succeeded in dragging him into the house.
As soon as he was gone the people left the garden. The last to go were Mussulman and the Philosopher. The Mussulman stopped at the door, and in the light of lamp looked gravely down at his leg, which, in its plaster cast, hung over like a dead thing between his two crutches.
Do you know, Philosopher,He said, I'd much rather have this stick of mine. The worst thing that can happen to one out there is to go crazy like that poor devil Rather off with ones head altogether and be done with it. Or do you think he still has a chance?
The Philosopher said nothing. His round good-natured face had gone ashen pale, and this eyes were swimming with tears. He shrugged his shoulders and helped his comrade up the steps without speaking. On entering the war they heard the banging of doors somewhere far away in the house and a muffled cry.
Then everything was still. One by one the lights went out in the windows of the officer wing. Soon the garden lay like a bushy black island in the rivers silent embrace. Now and then light showed at night sky, remainder of the raging war.
Once more a cruching sound was heard on the gravel. It was the four sentries marching back to the watch-house. One soldier was cursing under his breath as he tried to refasten his torn blouse. The others were breathing heavily and were wiping the sweat from their red foreheads with the backs of their hands. The old officer brought up the rear, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, his head bent low.
The old man stood still and listened until the rumbling had died away. Then he shock his clensched fist, and sent out a long curve of saliva from between his teeth, and muttered in a disgust that came from the depths of his soul: