by Bruce Duffy
Good! Gretl did her best to return his stare, trembling slightly as she said, Then listen to me. No more quarreling or evasions. Yes, you know — you know what I’m talking about.
He knew, and he was moving away. No longer was he the angry patriot. He was the defeatist now, sick to his heart as Gretl pressed in, saying, Just answer me, then. Why can’t you leave the army? You’ve fought honorably. We’ve paid our share — more than our share. Why can’t you leave?
Because I can’t.
But you can! You can be discharged, I’ve checked. So why? Mother won’t ask, but I can tell you, it will kill her if anything happens to you. So why? Explain it to me.
Gretl was using on him the same arguments he had used on Pinsent, but to no avail. He was trapped. Ripping back and forth across the rug, he said, I don’t care what the army says. The army has nothing to do with it. I can’t. Morally I can’t. And not because I’m a diehard. I’m obligated to my men.
Now she was scathing. Oh, don’t be an ass! And it’s not just patriotism or loyalty, so stop it! Your first obligation is to your family.
Then you don’t understand, he protested. You don’t understand at all. But beneath his vehemence, he saw that he didn’t understand it either — not at all.
At home there had been one more thing that sharpened this mounting sense of moral confusion and ambiguity. It was a letter from Pinsent.
This was the second letter he’d received from Pinsent, and again it was sent through Keynes. Military mail, two thin sheets permissible, mangled by the censor’s hasty black pen. Not much, but still he knew he was damned lucky to get it. The problem, though, was what to do with it. With each reading the letter changed. Confounding analysis or reduction, cunningly cheating expectations, it finally crumbled to ashes, sucked dry with repeated readings. No way to reconstruct the living from words or traces. No way to tell if Pinsent was not angry or distant, not changed or lost to him in some fundamental way. The letter said:
Easter
THE DOCTORS at the field hospital were stumped: though they were quickly able to rule out typhoid as the root of the big Croat’s paralysis, they otherwise didn’t know what to make of his symptoms. On the other hand, the doctors knew, from long experience, that they did not want to risk alarming the troops with fears of some unknown malady. With typical candor, they instead sent word that it was an endocrinic flare-up, treatable and absolutely noncontagious — nothing at all to be concerned about.
Unfortunately, by the time the good news filtered back to the field, two more men in Wittgenstein’s platoon, as well as four men in another, had been stricken with similar symptoms, rekindling fears of an epidemic. Ensconced in the command dugout, busily reviewing new deployment plans, the stalwart Lieutenant Stize was quick to pooh-pooh this epidemic rubbish, shrewdly noting that all the afflicted were “territorials” who, as anyone knew, were prone to hysterical disorders. Yet when Wittgenstein suggested that an appearance by the lieutenant might calm the men, Stize flatly refused:
That’s your job, Sergeant. I’m not here to wet nurse this bunch. As you can see, I’m busy.
In fact, Stize was only repeating wisdom gleaned from the officers’ mess, that indestructible café-bunker where he and his cohorts were now spending more time than ever. In the meantime, it hardly escaped the attention of malcontents like Grundhardt that the officers were staying far away from what they knew to be a contagious disease spread by bad water (the officers were said to have “special water”), rats, corpses or, in yet another variation, a mosquito found only in the pestilential Pripet marshes. By the next day, when twenty-two more were stricken, panic set in as rumors circulated that half of the sick men had already died from the disease, which was now called typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever, sleeping sickness and even plague.
At the same time, the Russians were stepping up their own campaign of nerves. Airplanes buzzed over the Austrian trenches, scattering leaflets printed in five languages urging Czechs and other nationals to desert the Hapsburg tyrants, citing devastating fuel, food and ammunition shortages that would soon bring crushing defeat. In good times, such propaganda was scorned or ignored, but under the circumstances it fueled even wilder rumors that the Russians, having poisoned their water and food, were now about to unleash a new and more deadly form of chemical gas.
Wittgenstein felt the rumor campaign mounting against him as well. Coming around a traverse that morning, he had found a group of men standing in simple-minded merriment before a crude chalk drawing of a bug-eyed creature named Shitgenstein swallowing the shaft of an enormous cock labeled Ernst.
It was as if someone had struck him over the head. Without even thinking, Wittgenstein swiped up a handful of mud and blotted out the drawing. But then as he looked around at his men, he realized that this would only be taken as an embarrassed admission of guilt. Yet wasn’t he guilty? It made no difference that he was innocent of this particular charge. The picture expressed a pictorial possibility. It was the potent latency of wish, a dreaded connectedness.
Damn it, he told himself, feeling himself dying before them. Think! Drive them back.
But seeing the men staring at him, judges now, he realized that here, in the kangaroo court of the trenches, guilt was its own truth. Lies bind reality as much as truth does. Men believed they were sick, therefore they were sick; with their own eyes they saw a picture that pleased them, hence it was true. The picture, open in form, offered itself equally to truth and falsity. The picture was true because he feared it.
How could he have been such a fool? he wondered dizzily. Clearly, they had known his proclivities all along. Steeling himself, he ordered the men off. He was all atremble then, thoroughly smearing it out with mud, when Ernst found him. Evidently Ernst had discovered another drawing, because he looked ready to throttle someone — possibly him, Wittgenstein thought.
Packing his fists, Ernst said, God damn it, Wittgenstein, I’ve had it! I’m going to teach that little son of a bitch a lesson.
No! Wittgenstein caught him by the arm. Damn it, Ernst, you thrash him and you’ll only be dignifying this muck. It may not even be Grundhardt.
Ernst slammed his fist into the sandbags. So what do we do, huh? Let him make bloody fools of us? Christ, he said, raging off. You’re as bad as Stize in my book.
More leaflets fell. And then, to give added weight to their warnings, the Russians pounded them for over four hours with their heaviest artillery in a barrage so well orchestrated that the senior staff wondered if the batteries were really Russian. Something was amiss. Ever since their long retreat the previous summer, the Russians were reported to be suffering from a chronic shortage of shells: they hadn’t dared use harassing tactics like these. But instead of responding with a galloping wall of fire, the Austrian return barrage was so tentative and thin that the troops became even more disheartened, feeling the enemy leaflets spoke the truth.
Blind as a charging rhinoceros, the Austrian army was incapable of quickly switching tactics to confront battlefield exigencies. The Austrian senior staff had still less patience for, or interest in, frivolous civilian niceties, such as timing. And so, even as the dead and wounded were being carted off after the bombardment — at a time when the epidemic was for the moment forgotten and the troops were most concerned with shoring up their broken defenses — they were instead confronted with medical officers, who arrived with jars of big blue placebos that they promised would stop this “flu.”
Stize and most of the other officers were not about to tarnish their prestige (or unnecessarily expose themselves) by being present when these jawbreakers were distributed. That task instead fell on platoon leaders like Wittgenstein. The men were understandably skeptical as he and Ernst started passing out the pills. Still, their native ignorance and herd fear might have led them to trust the efficacy of this sugar medicine had not Grundhardt spat his pill in the mud and squalled, These are worthless!
Standing down the trench, Wittgenstein pointed at him and said, P
ick it up! And then, as if obeying his order, Ernst snatched up the muddy pill and rammed it down Grundhardt’s throat.
Spit it out! Ernst sneered, cocking back his fist. Go on, you slimy little fucker. I dare you!
Wittgenstein was too late to stop him. But even then Grundhardt managed to turn the situation to his advantage, gagging and coughing so fiercely that the men felt Wittgenstein and Ernst were lashing back — trying to poison all of them.
That was it for Wittgenstein. He immediately went to Stize and insisted that Grundhardt be jailed for inciting unrest. Stize, then being shaved by Krull, wouldn’t hear it.
How can you bother me with this nonsense? he asked, blowing a wisp of lather from his upper lip. Here we have an epidemic on our hands, the Russians are poised to attack, and you bother me with this? I don’t care what he spit out. I don’t even blame him. Now go! I have work to do.
Wittgenstein did not know what he was going to do when he emerged from Stize’s dugout. Everyone knew he had gone to Stize about Grundhardt, and when he came back empty-handed, his authority would be a joke, if it wasn’t a joke already. Grundhardt had won. He had even succeeded in driving a wedge between him and Ernst. And now here was Grundhardt. Wittgenstein had ordered him to wait by the latrine, fearing that Ernst might kill him. He felt a terrific sense of anxiety when he saw the little pimp down the trench, smiling that malignant smile. Grundhardt was openly flouting him now, talking to two men when Wittgenstein had ordered him to stand at attention and not to speak to anyone. Wittgenstein hardly knew what he was doing. He must have said something to the two men because they parted from his vision like sheaves of wheat, and suddenly he found himself alone with Grundhardt. Wittgenstein was walking behind him, enraged now, with an ungodly clapping in his ears. And then Grundhardt turned to him with that nasty smile. Scratching his crotch insinuatingly, he then casually raised his middle finger to scratch his long nose — just, it seemed, so Wittgenstein could see the chalk under his nails. Wittgenstein wasn’t made of iron. He snapped then — snapped so suddenly that he fairly overwhelmed himself as he pounced on Grundhardt, his thumbs locked on his windpipe as he said in a voice that issued deep from the pit of his stomach, So you think you can outsmart me? Think so!
Struggling up with blood-engorged tongue, gurgling with rage, Grundhardt clawed at his hands as Wittgenstein hauled him up by the neck, then slammed his head down so violently that the black mud spattered up into his eyes. No telling what stopped Wittgenstein from killing Grundhardt. Certainly it was not a matter of conscious choice or some inner sense of decency. Wittgenstein simply felt a stab of revulsion and yanked him up by the collar. Coughing and gasping, Grundhardt spat and jerked away, wiping his purple face with a mud-drenched sleeve. Trembling, Wittgenstein felt utterly crazed, like an animal facing a natural predator, a hamstringing wolf who had now cut him from the fold. Kill him, said a stricken voice. Kill him while you still can. But over this came the quailing instinct of civilization, the astounding notion that even now this matter could somehow be negotiated, tidied, explained. But here Grundhardt was eons ahead of him; Grundhardt knew they had long passed that primal meridian. With his gray wolf eyes burning through the bitter black mud, Grundhardt scraped a long nail under his throat, a pig slit, slow and deep. Then, trembling like a berserker, he bit his thumb so hard that it cracked as he growled, I’ll kill you for this, you cocksucker — you kike. I swear to God I will. And then in a little wind he was gone, slipping like a greased turd down the trench.
It wasn’t like Ernst to apologize. But he must have been sorry for his outburst, or perhaps just lonely, because he came to Wittgenstein a few minutes later and said, Want to hear our latest intelligence?
Ernst laughed that crazy crow of his, then said, The Russians will attack by tonight or tomorrow because their deserters say they were issued clean underwear yesterday. They swear it’s a sure sign. It’s the only time they get fresh skivvies. Just before a big battle.
Wittgenstein stared at him in disbelief, then burst into laughter. The situation was so black and hopeless that they needed a good joke. There’d been another artillery duel, and they’d just lost a man whose life had splashed away while they struggled to lash off his shattered legs with lengths of telephone cord.
Still laughing, Ernst said, Honest to God. That’s what intelligence says. I heard it from some corporal down the way.
Trying to keep the comic momentum going, Wittgenstein said, Well, that reverses what Napoleon said. But then, looking at Ernst, Wittgenstein realized with embarrassment that Ernst, of course, would not know what Napoleon had said. Quickly he added, About an army fighting on its belly, I mean.
Still not sure what he meant, Ernst nodded sagely, saying, Well, we shoot from our bellies, all right.
Wittgenstein looked at him with chagrin and said delicately, Actually, what Napoleon was talking about, I think, was the soldier’s need for food. Napoleon would have thought it unmanly for soldiers to shoot lying on their bellies as we do, let alone from trenches. Wittgenstein pulled himself back, realizing that he was waxing pedantic. Quickly, he added, But then Napoleon didn’t have to contend with machine guns or barbed wire.
Ernst grinned crazily. Or Russians in clean underwear.
Wittgenstein clapped his hands together in delight, famished for Ernst’s naturalness and good sense. But Ernst still didn’t clap him on the shoulder.
The clean underwear proved a better barometer than expected, because later that afternoon the Russian bombardment began in earnest, with hundreds of artillery pieces — field howitzers, long-range heavy artillery and gigantic, high-arcing mortars — all firing at once, emptying the contents of whole freight cars with each salvo. Within an hour, the sheer volume of shells fired put to rest any lingering doubts that the Russians were short of shells. Everything the Russians had done wrong for the past two years they now did right, as carefully registered shells blew huge holes in the Austrian wire, destroyed buried telephone lines and silenced many of their biggest guns.
As night fell, the rocketing shells lit up the sky for a hundred miles. The Austrian lines were in chaos. Greasy, high-explosive smoke choked them and singed their nostrils. Whole men disintegrated in a bloody sleet, while those left alive lay dazed and helpless, bleeding profusely through their ears and noses. Violently, the atmosphere was contracting, expelling men from the womb of life, which didn’t want them anyway; they couldn’t even scream or catch their breath before the next explosion punched the air from their lungs. Men filled their pants with diarrhea and drove their fingers into their ears to drown the pile-driving concussions. Wittgenstein found buried men, hysterical men, fetal men and men reduced to jumbles of smoking rags and limbs. He saw bodies with their clothes blown off tumbling high into the air and crazed rats racing in circles. Even more unbelievable were the wounds. Men gnashed their own arms to dim the pain, begging to be killed. There were men so torn and riddled with shrapnel that nobody could believe they were alive, while others fell stone dead without a blemish, struck down as if by God.
Probably the men would have broken and run had they seen any reasonable chance of escape, but there was no chance. By midnight, order was breaking down badly, and the officers were checking their weapons for fear of mutiny. No stretcher bearers were available, no food had arrived or would arrive, their water was almost gone and their defenses were a shambles. Yet here when critical military communications were lost or destroyed, the rumors ran unchecked, streaking through the air like an electric current. It was as if they were all suffering the same dream. Anything was believed. Whole companies of Czechs were murdering their officers and marching over to the Russians. The Russians had a new gas that drove men berserk. Why, it was even rumored that Grundhardt was a spy — a captain in the Russian army.
The one thing certain about Grundhardt was that he had vanished. No one had seen him since the bombardment had begun, yet now everyone was talking about his daring escape, unable to imagine that he was more likely lying dead
somewhere. Not Grundhardt, they said. He was too slick. Besides, they said, nobody that evil ever got killed. They came up with countless ingenious dodges that Grundhardt could have used to escape. That Gypsy son of a bitch! they said. How he had fooled them! They seemed to feel it an honor to have been conned and stolen blind by him and suddenly saw every stupid, willful thing he had ever done as another master stroke, all part of his vast plan.
Wittgenstein let them talk — at least these wild fantasies about Grundhardt diverted them and eased their terror. Stize, meanwhile, felt vindicated in his wisdom when Wittgenstein told him about Grundhardt’s disappearance.
I told you you’d soon be rid of him, Stize was saying. But then a shell came whistling over and he dove for it, his eyes wobbling in their soot-blackened sockets as he skidded down the trench on his knees and elbows. All that night Stize had been careening around, too spooked and green — and too tipsy with shots of brandy — to distinguish near shells from passing screamers. It was almost touching, the mothering way Stize hugged his crotch as the next shell shrieked down and exploded in the reserve trenches two hundred yards behind them.
Seeing he was the only one who had dived for it, Stize scrambled up as if he had merely lost his footing, then quickly added, Anyway, he’s probably been blown to bits. Well, good riddance, I say. Adopting a more casual air, the lieutenant handed Wittgenstein a few lumps of gold foil, saying, Here, then. Have some chocolates.
Wittgenstein didn’t know what had gotten into him. In his own inept way, Stize was suddenly trying to act the part of an officer, braving shells to periodically check on him and the other men. At this late hour, Stize was even displaying a spirit of unexpected benevolence, handing out a small fortune in chocolates that the bandy-legged Krull carried for him in a field pack. Finding a group of muddy, miserable men in a bomb scrape, Stize would steel himself into a casual grimace as the beam of his flashlight found their hostile eyes. How are we doing? he would ask. Then before anyone could answer — or not answer — he would say, Good! Well, I’ll tell you, they’re getting worse than they’re giving, I have that on good authority. Here, he said, reaching into his goody bag. Have some chocolates! That’s the stuff! You men carry on!
