Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes (25 page)

“Seen it before?” said he, “how could he have seen it before? They don’t show the newsreels to soldiers.”

“No, naturally not. But in some other place. On the boat, or in a town. There are towns there of course. And don’t forget, we’ve seen that reel before. It may be two or three weeks old.”

“Of course,” said Beauvais, “and there’s the point. It may well have been an action he participated in, and seeing it again just now would have reminded him, could have brought up some certain memory.”

“No, he isn’t like that,” she said, “I’m sure of it. I don’t know how they can stand it of course, any of it, but he has never been that way, never. You know he isn’t nervous now, you’ve watched him. I was so thankful when I saw that his nerves weren’t affected. He’s never been nervous, I’ve always been thankful for it.”

“Oh yes,” Beauvais went on quietly, “I’ve seen it before. There are things a man hides. It was the same with my brother when he came home in ’18. Any talk of it made him sick at his stomach.”

“Yes, a very different case,” she said, stopping in front of a cart of green vegetables, “he was always finicky, and his nerves were bad, even as a child.”

Beauvais shook his head. “It isn’t so much a question of that,” he said.

“I want to get a nice cauliflower,” she said, “some nice
boules-de-neige,
you know how he liked cauliflower with melted cheese and a good dressing.”

“Yes, of course,” he replied, not caring about that now.

Where they stopped again for the cheese, there was a crowd, and Beauvais stood outside the open door, while of his wife everyone asked about the boy, back from the war.

“We are all thankful,” they said, “that his wound was not a more serious one.”

“No, not serious,” said Madame Beauvais, “he must still have his cane of course, but not so serious that they can’t take him away again.”

“Yes, that is always the worst. But then perhaps it will be over soon.”

“They are too young now,” said an old woman seriously, “too young for that.”

“Yes, perhaps it will all be over soon.”

“Yes, oh yes, let us certainly hope so.”

Beauvais hardly listened. Not serious? But would he be there?

He was there of course, sitting in the dreary little front room, reading the paper.

“You need not spoil your eyes,” said his mother switching on the lamp, “we have the lights here at five in the winter, just as always.”

No one spoke of his having left the cinema so abruptly, though once or twice he seemed on the verge of trying to explain, or at least to lie about why it had happened. But they were careful not to press him, so nothing about it was said.

After dinner, he and his father went to a bar down the sheet. It was a workingman’s bar, friends of his father from the
abattoir
were there, mostly strong men and above middle age like M. Beauvais himself, their wives, and with some their children.

“The ‘postman’s walk’ is it?” they said to Beauvais, after they had praised and welcomed the son and stood the two a drink, “what my wife says is if we can’t get out of the city, then we’re not taking your two weeks until they give us the weather along with it. A holiday’s no better than its sunshine she says. And that’s how it is with the women, can’t wait to get off more clothes, though precious little they’ve got on as it is. But then it’s different with you of course, you’ve your boy back from the war and in your place there’s no doubt I’d do exactly the same. Here let’s have another.”

Before the evening was out they were both a little drunk but they enjoyed it. Once the boy nearly got into a fight with another young man at the bar. A young punk really, who kept talking very loud though about nothing in particular, until, when one of the older men there with his wife told him to quiet down, the young punk said something really insulting. So the man who was there with his wife started for him, but was held back. And while the younger man stood there ranting still, Beauvais’ son took it up against him, he who turned then on both father and son, and actually got in one wild swing before someone managed to grab him—and Beauvais’ son too, who had suddenly made for him, holding his cane like a club. It was over so quickly that hardly anyone noticed, and by the time Beauvais and his son left, feeling very good, the whole crowded bar was singing together.

“I’ve been thinking,” said the boy the next day, “you might want to take a trip somewhere. After all, there’s no sense in wasting the vacation here in the city on my account.”

His father shook his head. “No, you’ve your friends to see here. And besides, I’m only taking a week now. We can have a week later, when it’s warmer.”

The young man shrugged. “My friends,” he said, as though this were no reason at all now. Beauvais said nothing, but nodded his head in evident understanding.

After lunch, the boy went out. He wasn’t back until late.

“Do you remember,” he asked his father at dinner, “the summer I worked in the
abattoir,
there was someone else there in our section about my own age, a son of one of the cutters, I don’t remember his name now.”

“About your age,” repeated the old man, trying to remember, “not Fouché’s boy? old Fouché, the head cutter.”

“Perhaps,” said Beauvais’ son, “but it doesn’t matter. I was only wondering.”

Afterwards, Beauvais went to the bar alone.

“No, he’s tired tonight,” he said to the
patron,
“he wanted to stay in and read.”

“He seems alright,” said the
patron.

“Oh yes. Yes, he’s alright.”

When Beauvais got home, he found the boy still sitting in the front room. There was a magazine torn into pieces around his feet. Apparently he had just done it.

“Sorry,” he said, “it’s these picture magazines. I can’t stomach them. To see the photographs one would think there was no war at all.”

Beauvais sat down heavily. He felt he’d had too much to drink at the bar. He nodded. “Yes, it must be strange to you, that what has been your life for the past year seems to occupy such little, or such misdirected concern of those who forced it on you.”

The boy bent down and got one of the torn pages off the floor. “Look at this,” he said, bringing it over. He fitted the pieces together under the lamp at his father’s chair.

Old Beauvais looked closely. What was it? A torn page, several blurred pictures, convoys in the rain, men picking their way over a town’s rubble, artillery explosions at a distance.

“That isn’t war,” said the young man.

Beauvais nodded. “No,” he said, “of course not.”

That night the boy had a terrible dream; he woke them up screaming. The father went to him. The boy was alright at once, as soon as he was fully awake, and he apologized.

“You saw the newsreel,” he said, “you were there. You know what a farce it was.”

Beauvais touched the boy’s hand, his warm moist brow. “Yes,” he said softly, “yes, yes.”

After lunch the next day they were in the dreary little front room and the boy began to talk, sitting on the divan—not smoking—simply sitting there alone with his father beside him in the dull light, the boy sitting out on the edge of the divan, letting his hands clasp and unclasp in telling his secret, with only the rise and fall of his voice to violate the deadly monotony of the afternoon.

“In the first attack, the first
bayonet
attack, I held back, and in the second as well. No one noticed of course. There were plenty of others, falling down as if they were shot. It didn’t matter. But the next day, the very next morning, there was a terrible fight and they overran our position. We knew it would happen. I knew it. But no one could get out, the officers were everywhere.
We had to fix bayonets.

“I
couldn’t get the bayonet on at first. My hands were trembling. You see, I didn’t want to cut them. Shoot at them, yes, but I couldn’t cut them open—in training they tell you to stick the bayonet in, as; hard as you can, and twist up—I didn’t want to be cut open, you understand, to die cut open. I wanted to surrender, to huddle on the ground and cry.

“When the shelling stopped they started coming of course, across the field, not close at first but small, like crabs at an impossible distance and as though they were running sideways not knowing where we were. But they came on, falling, always, falling and getting up, until they were falling closer and closer. Everyone was firing now. I had begun to fire without knowing it. A second before the shelling stopped I had no control over myself, I only knew that when it stopped and they started across the field I would scream and run. But now I was shooting. They came. Falling. Falling and getting up.
How many had to fall before they stopped coming?
Then the first wave did stop. When they fell, they didn’t get up. And the wave after that, and after that. But each fell a little closer until they were not waves falling but faces. It was absurd, the way we went on firing from the hole, lying there, aiming the rifle, just as though they were still two hundred yards away when now they were trying to throw grenades as they fell. And then falling too close to throw them, and finally not falling at all, when the face I was shooting at didn’t stop coming.

“I couldn’t think about it, there was no time at all. I only raised the bayonet to keep him from coming down on me, just as with a stick you might try to fend off a falling bird. But I lunged it. I lunged it, twisting it up from his stomach.

“He was a huge man, I had to go back under his weight, holding the bayonet in his stomach. And the way he was, looking angry and surprised, not wanting to admit that it was there, pressing me back like he were a bull. Then I lunged it again, twisting it up and out, and it sawed straight up his stomach, parting the cloth with it and cutting his belt in two so that his pants fell open. And standing there, still looking surprised, and ridiculous now, we both looked down at his stomach, how it was hanging wide open, though only for an instant, then everything went down with his blood and the screaming. I can tell you it happened in an instant. Then the blood was everywhere of course. It was over me, all around me. I was standing straight up. I should have been killed then, standing up in the hole. But I knew at once, the way the firing was going, that we were falling back, and I got out of the hole and began to run.

“That night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. I went over it again, every move, a thousand times. I put the bayonet in—slowly this time, to see exactly what happened. It was terrible. When I closed my eyes, it was there. All night I had chills and fever, once I even began to cry, but I always came back to it. There was something there, something—and I knew of course, even then I knew, but I pushed it back.

“I began to remember the instant of pressure against the bayonet before it went into his stomach, how for just an instant the stomach had resisted it. I went over it on a screen, in slow motion, thought of it diagramed on paper, as in the hygiene folders: a blue arrow here, red dots there, a segmented line. It was something fantastic, the bayonet and the stomach. Unreal, and for a while it was unbelievable. But most of all, while it was unreal it was terrible. And that was why of course.

“Nothing happened for a week. But I thought about it. The inside of the stomach, delicate and precise, even subtle. And then the bayonet was there, unexpected, so inexplicably there, and what it
did
when it moved through the stomach was so unreal that it couldn’t have happened. Then it did happen again. And it was the same thing, exactly the same thing, except that I knew then, just as I had almost known before, that it was
real.
And that was it. Once it was real, it wasn’t terrible, you see. No, it wasn’t terrible. I tried to keep it terrible, as a priest does things, because I was afraid, and I
am
afraid. But it was real, can you understand that? Once it was not a dream or an abstraction it couldn’t be terrible. I tried of course, I tried. The others did it, it didn’t bother them. I said, ‘It isn’t a stomach, what it is, is destroying an enemy. It’s terrible of course, but it’s no more than that. It’s no more than terrible.’ Because if one could keep it there, not let it out, it would be alright. I was afraid, you see, not afraid of being a coward, I was a coward of course. But afraid of losing my mind. Once I tried to talk to someone about it. He said I had too much imagination. ‘But it’s real,’ I said, ‘it really happens doesn’t it?’ ‘Don’t think about it so much,’ he said.

“He was killed two days later. He was almost deaf from concussion and he couldn’t hear the shells coming in. I yelled to him—he was standing up in his hole when the first shell came—and I yelled. He couldn’t hear me of course, he was half deaf from concussion. It hit ten feet in front of him. It exploded in his face.

“I crawled over to see. I knew he was dead, but I went over. ‘See if you can help him,’ I said,
‘see.’
I knew he was dead of course.

“There was plenty of time. It was getting dark, no one else was around. There was plenty of time to see his face. It was inside out. I knew it was his face because of the way the feet were turned. Absurd isn’t it? More as though his neck were very long like a dressed fowl, without a head. But I wasn’t sick. In fact, it didn’t bother me. It was understandable: industrial accident, railway disaster. Hospitals must get them every day. It was even abstract and believable. What it really was, was impersonal. The way you drop in the mortar shell and close your ears and perhaps your eyes too. Or throw the grenade and hide on the ground. Never look. Throw as well as you can, nothing more. Don’t look. Keep your head down. You’ll find them in the holes. But they may have been dead for a week, even the ones still moving. A terrible thing of course, still nothing to do with you, finding them like that, the face inside out, like a chicken’s neck.

“But it was more than that. Because I never enjoyed shooting anyone. I only shot
at
them. Even when I could see I might have hit, it was still only shooting
at
them. Nothing ever happened. You shot, and if you could see anything, you either hit or missed. But I never cared about that because nothing ever really happened. I wasn’t simply a killer, you see, I was something else, a butcher.