War

by Roald Dahl

  ‘I’ve saved lots of lives. And you can drive straight across intersections because the car you would have hit has already gone by. It went by just a little earlier because you delayed yourself by counting twenty.’

  ‘Marvellous.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘But it’s like jinking,’ he said. ‘You never really know what would have happened.’

  ‘I always do it,’ I said.

  We kept right on drinking.

  ‘Look at that woman,’ I said.

  ‘The one with the bosom?’

  ‘Yes, marvellous bosom.’

  He said slowly, ‘I bet I’ve killed lots of women more beautiful than that one.’

  ‘Not lots with bosoms like that.’

  ‘I’ll bet I have. Shall we have another drink?’

  ‘Yes, one for the road.’

  ‘There aren’t any other women with bosoms like that,’ I said. ‘Not in Germany anyway.’

  ‘Oh yes there are. I’ve killed lots of them.’

  ‘All right. You’ve killed lots of women with wonderful bosoms.’

  He leaned back and waved his hand around the room. ‘See all the people in this room?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t there be a bloody row if they were all suddenly dead; if they all suddenly fell off their chairs on to the floor dead?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t there be a bloody row?’

  ‘Certainly there’d be a row.’

  ‘If all the waiters got together and put stuff in all the drinks and everyone died.’

  ‘There’d be a godalmighty row.’

  ‘Well, I’ve done that hundreds of times. I’ve killed more people than there are in this room hundreds of times. So have you.’

  ‘Lots more,’ I said. ‘But that’s different.’

  ‘Same sort of people. Men and women and waiters. All drinking in a pub.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Like hell it is. Wouldn’t there be a bloody row if it happened here?’

  ‘Bloody awful row.’

  ‘But we’ve done it. Lots of times.’

  ‘Hundreds of times,’ I said. ‘This is nothing.’

  ‘This is a lousy place.’

  ‘Yes, it’s lousy. Let’s go somewhere else.’

  ‘Finish our drinks.’

  We finished our drinks and we both tried to pay the bill, so we tossed for it and I won. It came to sixteen dollars and twenty-five cents. He gave the waiter a two-dollar tip.

  We got up and walked around the tables and over to the door.

  ‘Taxi,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, must have a taxi.’

  There wasn’t a doorman. We stood out on the kerb waiting for a taxi to come along and he said, ‘This is a good town.’

  ‘Wonderful town,’ I said. I felt fine. It was dark outside, but there were a few street-lamps, and we could see the cars going by and the people walking on the other side of the street. There was a thin, quiet drizzle falling, and the wetness on the black street shone yellow under the lights of the cars and under the street-lamps. The tyres of the cars hissed on the wet surface.

  ‘Let’s go to a place which has lots of whisky,’ he said. ‘Lots of whisky and a man with egg on his beard serving it.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Somewhere where there are no other people but just us and the man with egg on his beard. Either that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Either that or what?’

  ‘Or a place with a hundred thousand people in it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  We stood there waiting and we could see the lights of the cars as they came round the bend over to the left, coming towards us with the tyres swishing on the wet surface and going past us up the road to the bridge which goes over the river. We could see the drizzle falling through the beams of their headlights and we stood there waiting for a taxi.

  THE SOLDIER

  * * *

  First published in Someone Like You (1953)

  It was one of those nights that made him feel he knew what it was like to be a blind man: not the shadow of an image for his eyes to discern, not even the forms of the trees visible against the sky.

  Out of the darkness he became aware of small rustling noises in the hedge, the breathing of a horse some distance away in the field, the soft thud of a hoof as it moved its foot; and once he heard the rush of a bird flying past him low overhead.

  ‘Jock,’ he said, speaking loud. ‘We’ll go home now.’ And he turned and began to walk back up the slope of the lane, the dog pulling ahead, showing the way in the dark.

  It must be nearly midnight, he thought. That meant that soon it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow was worse than today. Tomorrow was the worst of all because it was going to become today – and today was now.

  Today had not been very nice, especially that business with the splinter.

  Stop it, he told himself. There isn’t any sense thinking about it. It doesn’t do anyone any good thinking about things like that. Think about something else for a change. You can kick out a dangerous thought, you know, if you put another in its place. Go right back as far as you can go. Let’s have some memories of sweet days. The seaside holidays in the summer, wet sand and red buckets and shrimping nets and the slippery seaweedy rocks and the small clear pools and sea anemones and snails and mussels and sometimes one grey translucent shrimp hovering deep down in the beautiful green water.

  But how could that splinter have got into the sole of his foot without him feeling it?

  It is not important. Do you remember hunting for cowries along the margin of the tide, each one so fine and perfect it became a precious jewel to be held in the hand all the way home; and the little orange-coloured scallops, the pearly oyster shells, the tiny bits of emerald glass, a live hermit crab, a cockle, the spine of a skate, and once, but never to be forgotten, the dry seawashed jawbone of a human being with teeth in it, white and wonderful among the shells and pebbles. Oh Mummy, look what I’ve found! Look, Mummy, look!

  But to go back to the splinter. She had really been rather unpleasant about that.

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t notice?’ she had asked, scornful.

  ‘I just didn’t notice, that’s all.’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me if I stick a pin into your foot you won’t feel it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  And then she had jabbed him suddenly in the ankle with the pin she had been using to take out the splinter, and he hadn’t been watching so he didn’t know about it till she had cried out in a kind of horror. And when he had looked down, the pin was sticking into the flesh all by itself behind the anklebone, almost half of it buried.

  ‘Take it out,’ he had said. ‘You can poison someone like that.’

  ‘You mean you can’t feel it?’

  ‘Take it out, will you?’

  ‘You mean it doesn’t hurt?’

  ‘The pain is terrible. Take it out.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I said the pain is terrible. Didn’t you hear me?’

  Why did they do things like that to him?

  When I was down beside the sea, a wooden spade they gave to me, to dig the sandy shore. My holes were empty as a cup, and every time the sea came up, till it could come no more.

  A year ago the doctor had said, ‘Shut your eyes. Now tell me whether I’m pushing this toe up or down.’

  ‘Up,’ he had said.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Down. No, up. I think it’s up.’

  It was peculiar that a neurosurgeon should want to play with his toes.

  ‘Did I get them all right, doctor?’

  ‘You did very well.’

  But that was a year ago. He had felt pretty good a year ago. The sort of things that happened now never used to happen then. Take, for example, just one item – the bathroom tap.

  Why was the hot tap in the bathro
om on a different side this morning? That was a new one.

  It is not of the least importance, you understand, but it would be interesting to know why.

  Do you think she could have changed it over, taken a spanner and a pipe-wrench and sneaked in during the night and changed it over?

  Do you? Well – if you really want to know – yes. The way she’d been acting lately, she’d be quite capable of doing that.

  A strange and difficult woman, that’s what she was. Mind you, she used not to be, but there’s no doubt at all that right now she was as strange and difficult as they come. Especially at night.

  Yes, at night. That was the worst time of all – the night.

  Why, when he put out his right hand in bed at night, could his fingers not feel what they were touching? He had knocked over the lamp and she had woken up and then sat up suddenly while he was feeling for it on the floor in the dark.

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘I knocked over the lamp. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ she had said. ‘Yesterday it was the glass of water. What’s the matter with you?’

  Once, the doctor had stroked the back of his hand with a feather, and he hadn’t been able to feel that either. But he had felt it when the man scratched him with a pin.

  ‘Shut your eyes. No – you mustn’t look. Shut them tight. Now tell me if this is hot or cold.’

  ‘Hot.’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘Cold.’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘Cold. I mean hot. Yes, it’s hot, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the doctor had said. ‘You did very well.’

  But that was a year ago.

  Why were the switches on the walls, just lately, always a few inches away from the well-remembered places when he felt for them in the dark?

  Don’t think about it, he told himself. The only thing is not to think about it.

  And while we’re on the subject, why did the walls of the living-room take on a slightly different shade of colour each day?

  Green and blue-green and blue; and sometimes – sometimes slowly swimming like colours seen through the heat-haze of a brazier.

  One by one, neatly, like index cards out of a machine, the little questions dropped.

  Whose face appeared for one second at the window during dinner? Whose eyes?

  ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he had answered. ‘But it would be nice if we could draw the curtains, don’t you think?’

  ‘Robert, what were you staring at?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why were you staring at the window like that?’

  ‘It would be nice if we could draw the curtains, don’t you think?’ he had answered.

  He was going past the place where he had heard the horse in the field and now he could hear it again: the breathing, the soft hoof thuds, and the crunch of grass-cropping that was like the noise of a man munching celery.

  ‘Hello, old horse,’ he said, calling loud into the darkness. ‘Hello, old horse over there.’

  Suddenly he heard the footsteps behind him, slow, long-striding footsteps close behind, and he stopped. The footsteps stopped. He turned around, searching the darkness.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘You here again?’

  In the quiet that followed he could hear the wind moving the leaves in the hedge.

  ‘Are you going my way?’ he said.

  Then he turned and walked on, the dog still pulling ahead, and the footsteps started after him again, but more softly now, as though the person were walking on toes.

  He stopped and turned again.

  ‘I can’t see you,’ he said, ‘because it’s so dark. Are you someone I know?’

  Again the silence, and the cool summer wind on his cheeks, and the dog tugging on the leash to get home.

  ‘All right,’ he called. ‘You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But remember I know you’re there.’

  Someone trying to be clever.

  Far away in the night, over to the west and very high, he heard the faint hum of an aeroplane. He stopped again, head up, listening.

  ‘Miles away,’ he said. ‘Won’t come near here.’

  But why, when one of them flew over the house, did everything inside him come to a stop, and his talking and what he was doing, while he sat or stood in a sort of paralysis waiting for the whistle-shriek of the bomb. That one after dinner this evening.

  ‘Why did you duck like that?’ she had asked.

  ‘Duck?’

  ‘Why did you duck? What are you ducking for?’

  ‘Duck?’ he had said again. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’ll say you don’t,’ she had answered, staring at him hard with those hard, blue-white eyes, the lids dropping slightly, as always when there was contempt. The drop of her eyelids was something beautiful to him, the half-closed eyes and the way the lids dropped and the eyes became hooded when her contempt was extreme.

  Yesterday, lying in bed in the early morning, when the noise of gunfire was just beginning far away down the valley, he had reached out with his left hand and touched her body for a little comfort.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing, dear.’

  ‘You woke me up.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  It would be a help if she would only let him lie closer to her in the early mornings when he began to hear the noise of gunfire.

  He would soon be home now. Around the last bend of the lane he could see a light glowing pink through the curtain of the living-room window, and he hurried forward to the gate and through it and up the path to the front door, the dog still pulling ahead.

  He stood on the porch, feeling around for the doorknob in the dark.

  It was on the right when he went out. He distinctly remembered it being on the right-hand side when he shut the door half an hour ago and went out.

  It couldn’t be that she had changed that over too? Just to fox him? Taken a bag of tools and quickly changed it over to the other side while he was out walking the dog?

  He moved his hand over to the left – and the moment the fingers touched the knob, something small but violent exploded inside his head and with it a surge of fury and outrage and fear. He opened the door, shut it quickly behind him and shouted, ‘Edna, are you there?’

  There was no answer so he shouted again, and this time she heard him.

  ‘What do you want now? You woke me up.’

  ‘Come down here a moment, will you. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ she answered. ‘Be quiet and come on up.’

  ‘Come here!’ he shouted. ‘Come here at once!’

  ‘I’ll be damned if I will. You come here.’

  The man paused, head back, looking up the stairs into the dark of the second floor. He could see where the stair-rail curved to the left and went on up out of sight in the black towards the landing and if you went straight on across the landing you came to the bedroom, and it would be black in there too.

  ‘Edna!’ he shouted. ‘Edna!’

  ‘Oh go to hell.’

  He began to move slowly up the stairs, treading quietly, touching the stair-rail for guidance, up and around the left-hand curve into the dark above. At the top he took an extra step that wasn’t there; but he was ready for it and there was no noise. He paused awhile then, listening, and he wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear the guns starting up again far away down the valley, heavy stuff mostly, seventy-fives and maybe a couple of mortars somewhere in the background.

  Across the landing now and through the open doorway – which was easy in the dark because he knew it so well – through on to the bedroom carpet that was thick and soft and pale grey although he could not feel or see it.

  In the centre of the room he waited, listening for sounds. She had gone back to sleep and was breathing rather loud, making the slightest little whistle with the air betw
een her teeth each time she exhaled. The curtain flapped gently against the open window, the alarm-clock tick-tick-ticked beside the bed.

  Now that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark he could just make out the end of the bed, the white blanket tucked in under the mattress, the bulge of her feet under the bedclothes; and then, as though aware of the presence of the man in the room, the woman stirred. He heard her turn, and turn again. The sound of her breathing stopped. There was a succession of little movement-noises and once the bedsprings creaked, loud as a shout in the dark.

  ‘Is that you, Robert?’

  He made no move, no sound.

  ‘Robert, are you there?’

  The voice was strange and rather unpleasant to him.

  ‘Robert!’ She was wide awake now. ‘Where are you?’

  Where had he heard that voice before? It had a quality of stridence, dissonance, like two single high notes struck together hard in discord. Also there was an inability to pronounce the R of Robert. Who was it that used to say Wobert to him?

  ‘Wobert,’ she said again. ‘What are you doing?’

  Was it that nurse in the hospital, the tall one with fair hair? No, it was farther back. Such an awful voice as that he ought to remember. Give him a little time and he would get the name.

  At that moment he heard the snap of the switch of the bedside lamp and in the flood of light he saw the woman half-sitting up in bed, dressed in some sort of a pink nightdress. There was a surprised, wide-eyed expression on her face. Her cheeks and chin were oily with cold cream.

  ‘You better put that thing down,’ she was saying, ‘before you cut yourself.’

  ‘Where’s Edna?’ He was staring at her hard.

  The woman, half-sitting up in bed, watched him carefully. He was standing at the foot of the bed, a huge, broad man, standing motionless, erect, with heels together, almost at attention, dressed in his dark-brown, woolly, heavy suit.

  ‘Go on,’ she ordered. ‘Put it down.’

  ‘Where’s Edna?’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Wobert?’

  ‘There’s nothing the matter with me. I’m just asking you where’s my wife?’

  The woman was easing herself up gradually into an erect sitting position and sliding her legs towards the edge of the bed. ‘Well,’ she said at length, the voice changing, the hard blue-white eyes secret and cunning, ‘if you really want to know, Edna’s gone. She left just now while you were out.’