by Pete Ayrton
‘In a bloody madhouse. In a shit hole. Can’t you smell the rotten dead? Can you hear? Can you hear? You louse, you bloody rat. Pretending to be asleep and all the while your blasted owl’s eyes have been glaring at me. Ugh! Ugh!’
‘Camerade.’
A sigh came from the youth lying at the bottom of the hole. It was almost flute-like, having a liquidity of tone.
‘Ah! *uck you,’ growled O’Garra. ‘You’re as much to blame as anybody. Yes. Yes. As much to blame as anybody. Who in the name of Jesus asked you to come here? Haven’t I that bastard there to look after? The coward. Didn’t I have to drag him across the ground during the advance? Yes. YOU. YOU. YOU,’ and O’Garra commenced to kick the prisoner in the face until it resembled a piece of raw beef. The prisoner moaned. As soon as O’Garra saw the stream of blood gush forth from the German’s mouth, he burst into tears. Elston, too, seemed to have been stirred into action by this furious onslaught on the youth. He kicked the German in the midriff, making him scream like a stuck pig. It was this scream that loosed all the springs of action in the Manchester man. It cut him to the heart, this scream. Impotency and futility seemed as ghouls leering at him, goading him, maddening him.
He started to kick the youth in the face too. But now no further sound came from that inert heap. The Englishman dragged himself across to O’Garra. But the Irishman pushed him off.
‘Get away. I hate you. Hate you. HIM. Everybody. Hate all. Go away. AWAY.’
‘By Jesus I will then,’ shouted Elston. ‘Think I’m a bloody fool to sit here with two madmen. I’m going. Don’t know where I’ll land. But anything is better than this. It’s worse than hell.’
He rose to his feet and commenced to climb out of the hole. He looked ahead. Fog. And behind. Fog. Everywhere fog. No sound. No stir. He made a step forward when O’Garra leaped up and dragged him back. Some reason seemed to have returned to him, for he said:
‘Don’t go. Stay here. Listen. This state of affairs cannot go on for ever. The fog will lift. Are you listening, and not telling yourself that I am mad? I am not mad. Do you understand? Do you understand? Tell me!’
‘Is it day or night, or has day and night vanished?’ asked Elston.
‘It might well be that the whole bloody universe has been hurled into space. The bugger of it is, my watch has stopped. Sit down here. I want to talk. Do you see now? I want to talk. It’s this terrible bloody silence that kills me. Listen now. Can you hear anything? No. You can’t. But you can hear me speak. Hear that *ucker – moaning down there. They are human sounds. And human sounds are everything now. They can save us. So we must talk. All the while. Without resting, without ceasing. Understand? Whilst we are conscious that we are alive, all is well. Do you see now? Do you see now?’
‘I thought the bloody Jerry was dead,’ muttered Elston. ‘Dead, my arse. Come! What’ll we talk about? Anything. Everything.’
And suddenly Elston laughed, showing his teeth, which were like a horse’s!
‘Remember that crazy house down in Fricourt? Remember that? Just as we started to enter the God-forsaken place, he began to bomb and shell it.’
‘Remember? We both went out in the evening, souveniring. Went into that little white house at the back of the hotel. Remember that?’
‘Well!’
‘Remember young Dollan mounting that old woman? Looked like a bloody witch. I still remember her nearly bald head.’
‘Well!’
‘And you chucked young Dollan off, and got into bed with her yourself.’
‘Was it a long time ago? In this war, d’you mean?’
‘Yes. Are you tapped, or what? Course it was in this bloody war. What the funkin’ hell are you thinkin’ of, you loony?’
For the first time since they had found themselves in this position, they both laughed. And suddenly Elston looked up into his companion’s face, laughed again, and said softly:
‘Well, by Christ, d’you know that laugh has made me want to do something.’
‘Do something?’ queried O’Garra.
‘Yes,’ replied Elston, and standing over the prisoner in the hole, he pissed all over him. Likewise O’Garra, who began to laugh in a shrill sort of way.
There is a peculiar power about rottenness, in that it feeds on itself, borrows from itself, and its tendency is always downward. That very action had seized the polluted imagination of the Irishman. He was helpless. Rottenness called to him; called to him from the pesty frame of Elston. After the action they both laughed again, but this time louder.
‘Hell!’ exclaimed O’Garra. ‘After that I feel relieved. Refreshed. Don’t feel tired. Don’t feel anything particularly. How do you feel?’ he asked.
‘The same,’ replied Elston. ‘But I wish to Christ this soddin’ fog would lift.’
This desire, this hope that the fog would lift was something burning in the heart, a ceaseless yearning, the restlessness of waters washing against the floodgates of the soul. It fired their minds. It became something organic in the brain. Below them the figure stirred slightly.
‘Ah!— Ah!—’
‘The *ucker hasn’t kicked the bucket yet,’ said Elston. He leaned over and rested his two hands on O’Garra’s knees. ‘D’you know when I came to examine things; that time I thought you were asleep you know, and you weren’t; well I thought hard, and I came to certain conclusions. One of them was this. See that lump of shit in the hole; that Jerry I mean? You do. Well now, he’s the cause of everything. Everything. Everything. Don’t you think so yourself?’
‘Yes I do,’ said the Irishman. ‘That’s damn funny, you know. Here is what I thought. I said to myself: “That bastard lying there is the cause of all this.” And piece by piece and thread by thread I gathered up all the inconveniences. All the actions, rebuffs, threats, fatigues, cold nights, lice, toothaches, forced absence from women, nights in trenches up to your knees in mud. Burial parties, mopping-up parties, dead horses, heaps of stale shite, heads, balls, brains, everywhere. All those things. I made the case against him. Now I ask you. Why should he live?’
‘Yes,’ shouted Elston. ‘You’re right. Why should he? He is the cause of it all. Only for this bloody German we might not have been here. I know where I should have been anyhow. Only for him the fog might have lifted. We might have got back to our own crowd. Yes. Yes. Only for him. Well, there would not have been any barrage, any attack, and bloody war in fact.’
‘Can’t you see it for yourself now? Consider. Here we are, an Englishman, and an Irishman, both sitting here like soft fools. See! And we’re not the only ones perhaps. One has to consider everything. Even the wife at home. All the other fellows. All the madness, confusion. Through Germans. And here’s one of them.’
‘Ah!—’
Elston glared down into the gargoyle of a face now visible to them both, the terrible eyes flaring up at the almost invisible sky.
‘Water— Ah!—’
A veritable torrent of words fell from Elston’s lips.
‘Make the funkin’ fog rise and we’ll give you anything. Everything. Make the blasted war stop, now, right away. Make all this mud and shite vanish. Will you? You bastards started it. Will you now? See! We are both going mad. We are going to kill ourselves.’
‘Kill me—’
‘Go and shite. But for the likes of you we wouldn’t be here.’
‘Water—’
In that moment O’Garra was seized by another fit of madness. Wildly, like some terror-stricken and trapped animal, he looked up and around.
‘Fog. Yes fog. FOG. FOG. FOG. FOG. FOG. Jesus sufferin’ Christ. FOG. FOG. FOG. HA, HA, HA, HA, HA. In your eyes, in your mouth, on your chest, in your heart. FOG. FOG. Oh hell, we’re all going crazy. FOG. FOG.’
‘There you are!’ screamed Elston into the German’s ear, for suddenly seized with panic by the terrific outburst from O’Garra he had fallen headlong into the hole. The eyes seemed to roll in his head, as he screamed: ‘There you are. Can you hear it? You. Can you h
ear it? You *ucker from München, with your fair hair, and your lovely face that we bashed in for you. Can you hear it? We’re trapped here. Through you. Through you and your bloody lot. If only you hadn’t come. You baby. You soft stupid little runt. Hey! Hey! Can you hear me?’
The two men now fell upon the prisoner, and with peculiar movements of the hands began to mangle the body. They worried it like mad dogs. The fog had brought about a nearness, that was now driving them to distraction. Elston, on making contact with the youth’s soft skin, became almost demented. The velvety touch of the flesh infuriated him. Perhaps it was because Nature had hewn him differently. Had denied him the young German’s grace of body, the fair hair, the fine clear eyes that seemed to reflect all the beauty and music and rhythm of the Rhine. Maddened him. O’Garra shouted out:
‘PULL his bloody trousers down.’
With a wild movement Elston tore down the prisoner’s trousers.
In complete silence O’Garra pulled out his bayonet and stuck it up the youth’s anus. The German screamed.
Elston laughed and said: ‘I’d like to back-scuttle the bugger.’
‘Go ahead,’ shouted O’Garra.
‘I tell you what,’said Elston. ‘Let’s stick this horse-hair up his penis.’
So they stuck the horse-hair up his penis. Both laughed shrilly. A strange silence followed.
‘Kill the bugger!’ screamed O’Garra.
Suddenly, as if instinctively, both men fell away from the prisoner, who rolled over, emitting a single sigh – Ah… His face was buried in the soft mud.
‘Elston.’
‘Well,’ was the reply.
‘Oh Jesus! Listen. Has the fog risen yet? I have my eyes tight closed. I am afraid.’
‘What are you afraid of? Tell me that. There’s buggerall here now. This fellow is dead. Feel his bum. Any part you like. Dead. Dead.’
‘I am afraid of myself. Listen. I have something to ask you. Will you agree with me now to walk out of it? We can’t land in a worse place.’
‘My arse on you,’ growled Elston. ‘Where can we walk? You can’t see a finger ahead of you. I tell you what. Let’s worry each other to death. Isn’t that better than this moaning, this sitting here like soft shits. That time I fell asleep I did it in my pants. It made me get mad with that bugger down there.’
‘A thing like that,’ O’Garra laughed once again.
‘Listen,’ roared Elston. ‘I tell you we can’t move. D’you hear? Do you? Shall I tell you why?
‘It’s not because there is no ground on which to walk. No. Not that. It’s just that we can’t move. We’re stuck. Stuck fast. Though we have legs, we can’t walk. We have both been seized by something, I can’t even cry out. I am losing strength. I don’t want to do anything. Nothing at all. Everything is useless. Nothing more to do. Let’s end it. Let’s worry each other like mad dogs. I had the tooth-ache an hour ago. I wish it would come back. I want something to worry me. Worry me.’
‘Listen! Did you hear that?’
‘Well, it’s a shell. What did you think it was? A bloody butterfly?’
‘It means,’ said O’Garra, ‘that something is happening, and where something is happening we are safe. Let’s go. Now. Now.’
‘Are you sure it was a shell?’
‘Sure. There’s another,’ said O’Garra.
‘It’s your imagination,’ said Elston laughing. ‘Imagination.’
‘Imagination. Well, by Christ. I never thought of that. Imagination. By God, that’s it.’
They sat facing each other. Elston leaned forward until his eyes were on a level with those of the Irishman. Then, speaking slowly, he said:
‘Just now you said something. D’you know what it was?’
‘Yes. Yes. Let’s get out of it before we are destroyed.’
‘But we’re destroyed already,’ said Elston, smiling. ‘Listen.’
‘Don’t you remember what you said a moment ago?’ continued Elston. ‘You don’t. Then there’s no mistake about it, you are crazy. Why, you soft shite, didn’t you say we had better talk, talk, talk? About anything. Everything. Nothing. Let us then. What’ll we talk about?’
‘Nothing. But I know what we must do. Yes, by Jesus I know. D’you remember you said these Germans were the cause of the war? And you kicked that fellow’s arse? Well, let’s destroy him. Let’s bury him.’
‘He’s dead, you mad bugger. Didn’t we kill him before? Didn’t I say I felt like back-scuttling him? I knew all along you were crazy. Ugh.’
‘Not buried. He’s not buried,’ shouted O’Garra. ‘Are you deaf? Mad yourself, are you?’
The fog was slowly rising, but they were wholly unconscious of its doing so. They were blind. The universe was blotted out. They were conscious only of each other’s presence, of that dead heap at the bottom of the hole. Conscious of each other’s nearness. Each seemed to have become something gigantic. The one saw the other as a barrier, a wall blotting out everything. They could feel and smell each other. There was something infinite in those moments that held them back from each other’s throats.
‘Not deaf, but mad like yourself, you big shithouse. Can’t you see that something has happened? I don’t mean outside, but inside this funkin’ fog, savvy?’
‘Let’s bury this thing. UGH. Everything I look at becomes him. Everything him. If we don’t destroy him, he’ll destroy us, even though he’s dead.’
‘Let’s dance on the bugger and bury him forever.’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ shouted O’Garra. ‘I knew an owld woman named Donaghue whose dog took poison. She danced on the body.’
And both men began to jump up and down upon the corpse. And with each movement, their rage, their hatred seemed to increase. Out of sight, out of mind. Already this mangled body was beginning to disappear beneath the mud. Within their very beings there seemed to burst into flame, all the conglomerated hates, fears, despairs, hopes, horrors. It leaped to the brain for O’Garra screamed out:
‘I hate this thing so much now I want to shit on it!’
‘O’Garra.’
‘Look. It’s going down, down. Disappearing. Look,’ shouted Elston.
‘Elston.’
‘Let’s kill each other. Oh sufferin’ Jesus—’
‘You went mad long ago but I did not know that—’
‘Elston,’ called O’Garra.
‘There’s no way out is there?’
‘*Uck you. NO.’
‘Now.’
‘The fog is still thick.’
‘Now.’
The bodies hurled against each other, and in that moment it seemed as if this madness had set their minds afire.
Suddenly there was a low whine, whilst they struggled in the hole, all unconscious of the fact that the fog had risen. There was a terrific explosion, a cloud of mud, smoke, and earthy fragments, and when it cleared the tortured features of O’Garra were to be seen. His eyes had been gouged out, whilst beneath his powerful frame lay the remains of Elston. For a moment only they were visible, then slowly they disappeared beneath the sea of mud which oozed over them like the restless tide of an everlasting night.
James Hanley was born in Liverpool in 1897. He went to sea at the age of 17. He jumped ship in New Brunswick in 1916 and enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, which was part of the Canadian contingent that contributed to the crucial victories of Passchendaele and Vimy. In 1931, he published privately The German Prisoner with an introduction by Richard Aldington, who wrote:
Gentlemen! Here are your defenders, ladies! Here are the results of your charming white feathers. If you were not ashamed to send men into the war, why should you blush to read what they said in it? Your safety, and indeed the almost more important safety of your incomes, were assured by them. Though the world will little note nor long remember what they did there, perhaps it will not hurt you to know a little of what they said and suffered.
Not surprisingly, this short novel, which features the brutality of two
working-class soldiers (one from Belfast, one from Manchester) towards a German prisoner, proved too controversial for audiences of the time and was reprinted only in 1967. It is less shocking to a contemporary audience used to the news from Guantanamo and Iraq. Also in 1931, Boriswood Press published Hanley’s novel Boy, a powerful tale of sadism inflicted on a boy who becomes a slave at sea: the book was banned for obscenity in 1935 and not republished until 1990 with an introduction by Anthony Burgess. Hanley continued to write until his death in London in 1985. As his work becomes more available, he is now beginning to get the recognition denied him during his lifetime.
THEODOR PLIEVIER
MUTINY!
from The Kaiser’s Coolies
translated by Martin Chalmers
THE SHIP’S DOCTOR of His Majesty’s Auxiliary Cruiser ‘Wolf’ has put on his full dress uniform and requested to see the commander.
The commander receives him standing.
The quarterdeck is packed with prisoners. Hundreds, in rags, a dull grey mass, thrown together from every race. Only at meal times is there movement in the crowd. Otherwise they squat next to each other, like a society of great brooding birds, stare into the air or over the eternally blue ocean.
The doctor reports:
‘The state of health of the prisoners is even more worrying, but the same typical symptoms are present on the mess deck: cardiac dilatation, muscular atrophy, trapped nerve pain. Many are losing their teeth. All beds in the sick bay are occupied. A further hundred men should be admitted to the sick bay, thirty can no longer stand. A couple collapse every day. All are suspected of having scurvy. If the voyage is not brought to an end within a few weeks, the whole crew is facing death!’
That was in the Indian Ocean.
Since then we have sunk more ships, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and crossed the Atlantic Ocean from south to north. For the second time we are lying off the Denmark Strait, this time off the western channel.
The distance we have covered is equivalent to circling the globe three times and we have sunk 300,000 tons of shipping. All that is behind us. Our holds are stacked up to the hatches with precious cargo. The engines are overtaxed; the ship’s hull has sprung a leak because of repeatedly going alongside and unloading the captured steamers. We’re taking on 840 metric hundredweight of water every hour. The bilge pumps cope with the inflow of water.*
