Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes

by Terry Southern

  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 com
ing.

  “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.

  “After that, I used to lie in the hole, not firing anymore, just waiting, praying they would come. In the attack, I was always in the first wave. I won’t try to tell you what it was like then, killing them with the bayonet. It was like something, anything that had suddenly stopped being terrible. Yes, it was the opposite of terrible, but it was stronger. Because when it was terrible, I had to quiet it, hold it back. Now I gave over to it. Not at first, I was too afraid, but finally I gave over to it completely. I had to, you see, since it was real. You can understand that, that it was really happening, a fantastic and incredible thing was happening. Before the attack I strained like a leashed dog, do you know what that means? to kill violently? To butcher something and know what you’re doing while you’re doing it? It’s unreal isn’t it. Yes, of course. A kind of insane drunkenness. It was unreal to me too. But I couldn’t keep it that way, unreal and terrible. I thought I would go mad before the attack, my whole head throbbed, my hands shaking with impatience. To butcher them, cut them open. Not just the stomach, but the throat and the face, to crush in the face with the rifle butt. It was real, you understand, real, and I was doing it.

  “But you can’t see it can you? No, you won’t see it. I know that. You see something else, like fear and death, or courage, or something you can see on paper. But you could see if you only listened, if you really got the meaning there, behind the words, the feeling: not just to ‘take life’ but really to take an alive thing in your hand and cut it in half. It’s behind the words, you see, the thing I’m talking about, the real thing, is behind the words.

  “I’ll tell you this; I didn’t need the bayonet. I used it, why shouldn’t I? There was no secret about what it was for. The others knew. But they were fools, they didn’t believe it, even after it happened. They didn’t know what they were doing. Of course I used it. I would have torn a face apart with my mouth. But I used the bayonet. We all had them, since training, everyone knew about it. I had mine, and that’s how I killed them. And nothing else mattered. Nothing. Of course I had to get there. I had to get there without being killed. But that was only annoying, tantalizing sometimes. There was no danger. I shut that out completely so as not to spoil it. And I was careful, you see, but I was also fast. I had to get there, but I had to get there quickly.

  “One morning there were two attacks on a hill outside S. and I was decorated for leading a charge while wounded. I didn’t know, you understand. I was shot in both legs. After it was over, I saw I was wounded and I couldn’t stand up. During the attack I had been running. The surgeon said it was impossible. Later I even showed him the citation. He never believed it of course.”

  And he was done. The boy finished as simply and quietly as he had begun, having only once or twice shown any emotion about what he was saying. Now he sat back with his chin on his chest, his eyes soft, offlooking down across the floor, not in wanting or even anticipation of anything from his father beside him.

  And Beauvais felt no need to speak, felt nothing for the moment. Then, ‘Of course,’ he said to himself, ‘the boy’s getting it off his chest.’

  Beauvais returned to his job the next day, to one of the large
abattoirs on the edge of the city where he worked as a cutter.

  He had to get there early, for the whole day’s work of the abattoir began in his section. So when he stepped off the bus, the morning still hung gray and wet around the open square where only the yellow arc lamps shone.

  Flat, black, far back off one side of the open square sat the abattoir, so great and dismal, an uncertain form in the half night when Beauvais crossed the square.

  White lights burned through the mist from the Café du Sang des Bêtes on the corner, and Beauvais went inside. A dozen or so workers were standing around having a glass of coffee at the bar, or a hot wine.

  “Tiens!” someone cried.

  “Here he is now.”

  They greeted Beauvais noisily, moved toward him, old Fouché waving a newspaper.

  It was a local morning paper, and on the fourth page they had found a little item about Beauvais’ son, saying that he had been repatriated and was convalescing. It gave Beauvais’ name and address, and said that the boy had been decorated for bravery, and the item ended quoting the following citation, furnished by the War Minister’s Office, which old Fouché now read aloud for what must have been the sixth time that morning:

  “ ‘During the action of the morning of the 19th, Private Gerard Beauvais distinguished himself and his unit by pressing forward in attack, under heavy fire, despite severe leg wounds, leading a courageous and successful bayonet charge on a vital enemy gun emplacement, and personally destroying three of its crew in the subsequent action.

  “ ‘Apart from individual merit, such a display of ardent will and valor by a private soldier serves to inspire fellow troops to acts above and beyond the call of duty, and stands in the finest tradition of the Service.’ ”

  “Voilà, un homme!” said someone warmly.

  “He’s his father’s son,” they all agreed.

  Fouche cut out the item with his pocket knife and gave it to Beauvais. They all stayed at the café a little longer than usual. Most of those who were drinking hot wine had a second glass.