The General of the Dead Army (12 page)

Then, presumably still thinking of the priest’s questions, he grew pensive.

“Why do they talk to me like that?” he asked the expert in a low voice.

“They are foreigners, grandad, they have different ways from us.”

“You go to so much trouble, you come so far, and … “ “Now, now, old father, don’t you let them upset you,” said one of the workmen who had climbed down to load the coffin onto the lorry. “We’re going to have to say goodbye to you now. We have to be on our way.” As the old man was talking to the expert and the workmen were lifting the coffin onto the lorry, the general, who was just about to climb back into the car, suddenly turned back.

“Is he claiming compensation?” he asked the expert.

The expert blushed. “No!”

“He has a perfect right to do so. We are prepared to pay him what he asks.”

“But he hasn’t asked for anything!”

The general, thinking he had found a way of avenging himself to some extent for the affront he had received from the old peasant, insisted.

“All the same, tell him that we intend to remunerate him.”

The expert hesitated.

“We should like to compensate you for your trouble,” the priest told the miller in silky tones. “What sum would satisfy you?” The miller scowled and lifted his head. “I don’t want anything,” he said curtly.

“But after all, you have gone to a fair amount of trouble, taken up valuable time, used a certain amount of raw material…”

“Nothing,” the peasant said again.

“But you provided this soldier with board and lodging for a considerable period. Perhaps we could make out a bill.” The old man shook out his pipe.

“I too am in his debt,” he said. “I didn’t pay him his last wages.

Perhaps you would like me to give them to you!”

And, turning his back on them, the old miller walked back to his donkey.

As the car was about to move off the boy murmured something in the old man’s ear and the latter began waving his hand towards them.

“Wait, devils, I nearly forgot! I have something else for you.”

And he thrust his hand under his cloak.

“He’s going to ask for money after all,” the general said when he saw the old man wave. “You see! I knew it!”

“What is it?” the expert asked, as he got out of the car.

“A book,” the old man said. “He wrote in it sometimes. Here, take it!”

The expert stretched out his hand and took the book. It was an ordinary school exercise book filled with small, neat writing.

“His last wishes, no doubt,” the old man said, “otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to bring it to you. Who knows what the poor fellow scribbled in it. Perhaps he has left his goats and sheep to someone. I didn’t like to ask him about that. But even if he’d had any animals, the wolves will certainly have eaten them all by now.”

“Thank you,” the expert said. “It will almost certainly give us his name.”

“We all called him ‘Soldier’,” the old man said. “No one ever thought to ask him what his name was. Farewell. God be with you on your journey.”

“Another diary!” the general said, flicking through the exercise book the expert had handed to him. “How many is that we’ve found?”

“This is the sixth,” the priest said.

The car moved off, followed by the lorry, and the general, turning round, saw the old countryman stand for a moment without moving, looking after them, then turn in the opposite direction, driving his donkey before him, and set off home again with his grandson by his side.

T
HE GENERAL, HAVING NOTHING
better to do once he had sunk back into his corner of the car, opened the exercise book. The first page was missing - the first pages of most of the diaries they had found were missing - but once he had started to read he realized that probably no more than the first two or three sentences had gone. Probably the writer had filled most of the first page with his particulars and then, changing his mind later on, had ripped the whole page out. The general continued reading:

The important thing is that no one should find this diary. Here the risk is not great; firstly because no one in the miller’s family knows how to read, and secondly because they don’t know our language.

Yesterday evening, when the miller saw me with my exercise book on my knee, he asked:

“What are you writing there, Soldier?”

Everyone here calls me “Soldier”. No one has ever thought to ask my name. The miller’s wife addresses me like that, and so does Christine, their only daughter. In fact I think she was the first to call me by that name. It happened the day our battalion was forced to retreat by the partisans. After throwing my rifle into a clump of bushes I ran off as fast as I could through the forest. I kept to a water channel, because I knew that such channels must always lead eventually to human habitations. I wasn’t wrong. It turned out to be the mill-race for this mill. As I walked up to the door a young Albanian girl who was trying to calm down a big dog exclaimed with a surprised look: “Papa! There’s a soldier coming here!”

And that was how my life as a mill-hand began that day. Sometimes I just can’t understand myself, how a soldier like me, from the Iron Division, could be reduced to being a servant in an Albanian miller’s house and wearing one of these white caps the peasants round here all wear.

“If you can help me in my work,” the miller told me, “you shall have board and lodging here, and my protection as well. I am getting old and I’m no longer able to do a lot with my hands. My only son has gone into the mountains with the partisans. Only I warn you: no monkey tricks or I shall hang you from one of the beams in my loft.” And that was our contract.

It’s more than a month since all that, and now I am responsible for a whole heap of jobs; I cut wood in the forest, I keep the mill-race clear, I fix back tiles when they fall off the roof, I fill and empty the sacks.

My mates in the battalion and all my family must certainly think I’m dead. If they could see me as I am now, an ex “Iron” soldier, covered all over in flour, with this cap on my head, they would be flabbergasted I should think and certainly end up bursting out laughing.

25 February

It’s very cold. The wind has blown so violently all day that I feel it’s going to rip up the mill by its foundations. Not much work. The winter is such a hard one that there are very few villagers prepared to risk the journey to the mill to have a sack of maize or wheat milled. The fields are deserted this year. The few peasants who do come tell the most terrible stories.

The howling wind. Day and night. I have the feeling that the wind is howling over the whole world.

March 1943

The miller treats me quite well. Yesterday I repaired a section of the roof that had been damaged by the wind. The miller was very pleased with my work. He said:

“Well, soldier, you’re very good with your hands.” Then after having looked me up and down for a moment he added in a bantering tone: “It’s only war you don’t go for much, I take it.”

I blushed up to my ears. It was the first time anything had been said about my desertion.

He slapped me on the shoulder then.

“I wasn’t trying to needle you,” he said with a smile. “It just came out without my thinking.”

His words have haunted my mind all day. I’ve noticed that the Albanians all have a profound respect for bravery. They despise cowards, and apparently I have given him the impression that I am one. A hulking great fellow like me, six foot one!

I would really be sorry to be thought of as a coward here.

I’d be ashamed in front of Christine especially. She’s not yet seventeen, and every time I see her I feel my heart emptying suddenly, like a burst bladder. Just like that!

Afternoon

Today something extraordinary happened. I’d gone to cut wood in the forest and when I came back I saw a man sitting on the step, outside the mill. I paused and listened, absolutely stunned. The man was whistling a tune from home. I went closer, and then I saw that the rags he was wearing were the remains of one of our uniforms. I shouted:

“Hey! Friend! Welcome!”

We threw ourselves into one another’s arms, then we sat down together on the step.

In no time we told each other our stories: the units we’d deserted from, what became of us, the work we were now doing. He had come with his boss, a local peasant, to have some sacks of maize milled. He told me that from all accounts the “show” - in other words the war - was coming to a close, that nobody would go so far as to ask us why we had fled, rather the opposite, it would be us calling to account those who had despatched us to this “show”. Then he told me confidentially that there were lots of soldiers like us working for the Albanian peasants. We both burst out laughing when he told me what he did: anything from taking the cows to pasture to rocking the babies like a nanny.

“It’s only with the women that you have to pull your belt in,” he said. “The Albanians are touchy about their honour. Run after a woman and they’ll cut yours off, mark my word! But you, my friend, I have the impression you’re onto a cushy number,” he added with a mischievous wink. “I caught a glimpse of your boss’s daughter just now. Fantastic!”

“You’re mad! I wouldn’t even dare think about it. You just told me yourself what the risks are.”

“Yes, yes, I did, I agree. But I have the feeling that here it’s different. It’s a beautiful spot, so peaceful. Like I said, you’d think you were in Switzerland.” From inside the mill we could hear the monotonous rumble of the stones milling the maize.

He took out his tobacco tin and rolled himself a cigarette the way the peasants do round here.

“Listen,” he said, his eyes half-closed, very thoughtful. “You haven’t heard anything about the ‘Blue Battalion’?” I shuddered.

“No,” I answered quietly. “Why?”

The mention of this name was enough to snuff out all my cheerfulness. “I see you’re scowling. But don’t worry. They’re patrolling central Albania, slaughtering all and sundry, but you’re not to let it bother you …”

“Will they have another go back here?”

“Who knows … what they’re after in particular are the deserters.”

“Shush!”

I stood up to avoid hearing any more of his soothing remarks that he kept larding so gaily with grisly details.

My miller and the farmer were engaged in a long discussion inside. When the maize was finally milled the two visitors each threw a bag over one shoulder and set off home, the farmer in front, the soldier bringing up the rear.

Sunday 2 April

Every time I hear the little bells tinkling on a bridle I am delighted at the thought of company, because the loneliness here is beginning to get me down.

The miller is a good, just man, but he has the drawback of being a man of few words. I have noticed that Albanians are generally far from talkative, and especially the men. All he does all day is suck at his pipe, and God alone knows what thoughts he is turning over behind those clouds of smoke. I have more conversations with his wife, “Aunt Frosa” as I call her. She’s forever asking me questions, about my parents, my relatives, my home. When I confess to her how much I long to see them again she looks at me with a sympathetic air and shakes her head.

“Poor boy,” she says quietly, and then she goes off to knead her bread or wash up.

“And while you’re away,” she asked me one day, “who is looking after your animals?” I laughed.

“We don’t have any animals.”

“Not even any cows?”

“No, not even any cows. We live in town.”

“And besides, even if you did have any, with you being away the wolves would have eaten them all by now. Ah, my boy, these days men themselves are tearing one another to pieces like wild beasts, we don’t need to talk of wolves.”

I could think of nothing to say to that. Another day she asked me about my medallion. “What is that you wear round your neck, my boy? It looks like a big Turkish penny.”

I laughed.

“It’s a sort of sign we soldiers wear, so that we can be recognized if we’re killed in battle. Look, just below the image of the Virgin there’s a number. Do you see it?”

Aunt Frosa put on her spectacles. They are rather absurd-looking spectacles with one lens cracked. “And who gave you this?”

“Our leaders.”

“May the lightning strike them!” she said, and walked away still muttering.

Those are the sort of things Aunt Frosa and I talk about. As for Christine, I see her very rarely and actually speak to her even less often. She’s the one I’d really like to talk to, of course.

Especially since I can get along fairly well now in Albanian. But we never see her at the mill. She’s busy all day with her housework, and the rest of the time she spends knitting. Even when she comes to tell us that our meal is ready she only stays at the door for an instant. She throws me an evasive glance from those dark, gentle eyes of hers, then she quickly turns her head away.

Sometimes she calls to me from a window without even bothering to come downstairs:

“Soldier, tell papa food is on the table!”

The fact is I think about her, come evening time; sometimes I play with Djouvi, the big dog. Sometimes I let my eyes wander across the sky as I listen to the brook splashing; then I go off into my daydreams again.

April

Today Christine smiled at me.

Last night some bandits tried to break into the mill. They wounded Djouvi. He is badly hurt. The miller and his family are very upset.

May, about 3 o’clock

A villager came by with a Turkish watch hanging from his neck. It’s a long time since I last saw a watch.

I dream about masses of things, but it’s Christine above all that I have on my mind. All sorts of crazy thoughts go through my head. I know that they’re crazy of course; but all the same I enjoy letting them run on and seeing where they lead.

Yesterday, round about noon, I was stretched out near the race and having nothing better to do I was throwing pebbles into the water. The poplars were rustling all around me and I let myself be lulled into a doze.

Suddenly I heard a terrific noise: footsteps, voices, whistles, horses’ hoofs. I jumped to my feet and what did I see? A long column of our soldiers had almost reached the mill. I wanted to run away, but, I don’t know why, I did the opposite, I ran towards them.