War and Turpentine

by Stefan Hertmans

  One morning in late February, I went for a stroll along the docks, turning into one street and then another as the fancy took me. I strayed into run-down areas on the outskirts of the city, lost my way, arrived at a walled garden, and found a kind of cloister with a small church. I walked in without any hope, simply intending to pray for my dear departed father. I kneeled down on a hard, simple bench. A few candles were giving off smoke, and a woman lay prostrate on the stone floor, praying. I took my rosary beads from my pocket and sank into a long, repetitive prayer that soothed me, as if all my cares slipped away. When I stood up, cleansed, I noticed behind the altar a mural that appeared to portray St. Francis; a wreath of small birds flew around his half-bald head. I climbed the two steps past the altar and felt a kind of electric shock run through my body; the saint’s face was, unmistakably, my father’s. I could not believe my eyes, but there he stood—he had painted his self-portrait, here, where no one would think worse of him for it, in the certainty that no one would ever know or see what he had done. Here, far from everyone who knew him, my father had immortalized himself in the guise of his patron saint….This was his face, a few months before his death, a death he might already have felt skulking in his thin frame. Dumbfounded, I gazed at the mural. This was just how his face had looked when he stepped off the train at Zuidstatie in Ghent, that far-off day in the quiet years before the war.

  To the right of the saint was a shepherd boy, and this gave me a second shock. It was undeniable: the boy reaching out his hand affectionately to the saint—had my own face. I looked again, feeling sure that my overwrought imagination must be playing tricks on me. But no, he had painted me from memory precisely as I was in those days, a boy about fourteen years old, with coarse, bristly hair, a short thick neck, the blue eyes I’d inherited from him—there I was, in a humble corner next to my father, shrouded in the half-darkness of a small church. Had he sketched me while I was sleeping behind the coal stove? Could he really have painted this purely from memory? In a flash, it occurred to me that I had posed for the Christ figure in the monastery of the Brothers of Charity not long before he left for Liverpool. Had he taken a number of sketches along with him? Either for this purpose or simply the way people would later bring family snapshots along on their travels? He had never said one word to me about this. It must have seemed inconceivable that I would ever find out. I remembered how he had burst into tears when he returned home and saw my sketches: who knows, maybe he was thinking of this fresco then….I was immediately overcome by the memories of churches where I had sat next to him, my whole childhood long. I could still see it all before me—his movements, his quiet coughing when he was intent on his work, the smell of turpentine and oil. Overwhelmed by melancholy, I sat and took in the fresco for many long minutes. After half an hour, I went back outside. Immersed in memories, in the grip of confused emotions, I returned to the center of town. In a sudden burst of sunlight, I saw the statue of Pallas Athena light up like an otherworldly apparition on the dome of the Town Hall. I heard seagulls squawking over the streets, I stopped to pray in St. Nicholas’ Church, I walked to the terminus of the Great Western Railway along the banks of the choppy, dark gray Mersey. I sat on a mooring post by the docks, staring out in disbelief at the vague strip of blue sky over Birkenhead. That night I hardly slept. I wrote my mother another letter to tell her what I had seen, but it all seemed so improbable that I started to doubt again; what if the whole thing was a figment of my imagination?

  The next day, I tried to reconstruct my winding route. I roamed the streets and parks, crossed squares and avenues, but to my dismay, I could not find the little church. I didn’t have much time left; a few days later, we would return to London. We had already been spending full days on preparatory exercises. I became extremely fretful about my latest stupid mistake—I hadn’t thought to jot down the name of the church or the street! I had one last afternoon off, and in the few remaining hours before I had to report for embarkation, I took one last walk through all the neighborhoods I thought I had passed through. Before I knew it, I had looped back to my starting point. I returned to the hospital, wheezing. Maud gave me a skeptical look and asked if I was really ready to go back.

  A soldier must obey orders, I said to her, and almost before I knew it I’d saluted. A spark of amusement seemed to light up in her eyes.

  As we set off for London, I was in a state of confusion, consumed with fretfulness and self-reproach. I swore one day to return to Liverpool and find the little church. Many years later, realizing I would not make it there myself, I asked the Brothers of Charity in Ghent for a list of all the churches and monasteries in Liverpool. That was in 1939. One small Welsh church more or less matched what I remembered, but I found out it had been demolished—and couldn’t imagine he would have painted there in any case. I will never forget the impression that faraway, vanished mural made on me. It may even have fated me to become the man I am today, wavering between a full, difficult life and the quiet consolations of painting.

  —

  We marched to Lime Street Station. The drab carriages, some riddled with bullet holes, were waiting for us. Past high, dark walls, soot-black tunnels and bridges, the train rolled out of the city. We had soon left the nautical atmosphere of the Mersey’s banks far behind us. Along the way, I saw the peaceful hills and the pastures at Wolverton, bordered with ancient trees. I felt I was being pulled away from my life’s rediscovered center of gravity; it was also then that I finally realized I had been in love with my nurse Maud the whole time, and too bashful even to say goodbye to her as we marched in formation to the army van. My groin was still tight; I could feel the scar when I tired myself out walking, and I sometimes had muscle cramps I’d never had before. But I also knew that I was well enough to return to duty and had no means of prolonging my stay in the heavenly peace and quiet of the hospital. I had buried my sketchbooks deep in the sackcloth bag issued to us on departure. As our journey took us farther from the coast, the sky clouded over, and it started to rain over the gray suburbs. Wriggly lines like glass worms streaked down the windows of the carriages, which were abuzz with conversation and laughter, boisterous song, tobacco smoke, and the smell of booze. We had already returned to our crude life as soldiers.

  —

  In London, I saw my stepbrother Joris. After his anemic wife had died in a bombardment, he’d become one of the many Belgian refugees. For weeks he’d been wandering the city, regularly checking the military dormitories for familiar faces. When he recognized me, he burst into tears, urged me to be careful, and said his life was ruined, that he saw no point in carrying on. I asked what he’d heard about my mother and sisters and told him to go back to Ghent—that was where he belonged, living in London would destroy him. I was relieved to hear from him that my two brothers were back at home. Emile was nineteen, Jules sixteen; they could be called up any day. His own brother Raymond, my younger stepbrother, was also wandering around somewhere, Joris had no idea where. It was March 1915. In a few days, we would cross the Channel to the battlefront.

  Before leaving London, I received a letter from my mother, sent on from Liverpool by military post. She wrote that she was deeply moved by my story about the mural and would like to go on a pilgrimage to see it, but that Henri was bound to say no. He had escaped conscription thanks to his lame right leg and was making her life miserable with his gruff, temperamental ways. Never before had she written about Henri so openly and explicitly. Touched, despondent, and fearful all at once, I watched the chalk cliffs of Dover slowly sink away behind our ship. We had been on the open sea for only an hour when we clearly heard the rumbling of heavy guns in the distance; it was like the growl of some gargantuan animal lying in wait for us on the horizon, opening its hungry jaws wide to devour us. We were heading back to hell.

  —

  When I report to the medical service, the examination does not take long.

  Eh bien, mon brave, try walking a little. Come on! Un, deux, faster!

 
The thump of a stamp slamming down on the desk.

  Bon pour le service actif. Fit for general service. Next!

  To my surprise, the package presented to me includes my capote with the shot-up collar. As soon as I try to put on that steam-cleaned, threadbare rag, it is taken away from me.

  I am issued with a blue overcoat with domed black buttons, a pair of old, worn-out shoes, and a hat with ear flaps. Apparently, the stock of military uniforms has been used up. In this outlandish outfit, perhaps from the wardrobe of a dead civilian, I walk the last leg of my journey to the rear of the lines alone, past batteries of reservists, past farmhouses standing solitary in the countryside, with soldiers tramping in and out of them. I do not see a single familiar face, and begin to worry. But as I make my way down a long lane of half-obliterated poplars, I am struck by the sound of bellowed commands. My heart lurches with shock; for the first time, I clearly see last year’s closing scene in my mind’s eye—the charge toward the riverbank with Kimpe, the shot that took me down. Through a privet hedge, I see a high-ranking officer in the inner courtyard of an open farmstead. His soldiers stand in a large circle around him, listening in silence. As I step through the open gate, most of them turn their heads toward me. I step back, not wanting to interrupt the captain’s speech, but he snarls, Approchez!

  I try to push my way through the men, but they tug at my clothes, somebody clasps my hands, tries to embrace me: Martien, you bastard, are you still alive? What are you doing here in that queer outfit?

  The man who throws his arms around my shoulders is Kimpe—Lieutenant Kimpe now.

  Rompez les rangs! the captain barks. Fall out! The soldiers salute and march off to the barn.

  The captain tells me to come with him and Kimpe. In his office, set up in the stuffy sitting room of the farmhouse, he asks me to state my identity.

  C’est Martien, mon capitaine, Kimpe says, beaming.

  Stow it, Kimpe. Nom?

  Sergent-Major Martien, mon capitaine.

  There is no paperwork to be found, so it’s up to Kimpe, after all, to report on my military record. I am assigned to the quatrième section. Inquiries will be made to confirm that I truly received the rank of first sergeant-major for my conduct at the front. I am placed in command of twenty men at the front in Noordschote and told to pick up a uniform and a new rifle in the scullery.

  Apparently, the front has been quiet. A “quasi-status-quo” has been reached, as Kimpe officiously puts it.

  This section has just returned from the village of Boesinghe, where yet another two recruits were felled when the Germans attempted to capture the lock.

  Just stay as brave as you have been, the captain says, and he gives me a meaningful nod.

  I salute and walk outside. About a dozen soldiers rush up to me and slap me on the back, all shouting at once.

  Hullo, old sweat, we thought you must be pushing up daisies….De Meester saw you fall, and that was the last we heard of you.

  I tell my story, leaving out my father’s fresco.

  That afternoon, there’s a strict inspection of rifles, ammunition, and rations. We are told to watch out for barbed wire and unexploded shells when we crawl through the mud, and we learn of a new type of shell that contains tear gas. Apparently, the French were the first to use it, and the British soon followed their lead. Bromacetone, Kimpe says. Foul stuff. It keeps on blowing back in our direction. If you inhale that filth for more than a second, you puke up your lungs a few days later and die like a dog.

  —

  We spend the first week ceaselessly filling sandbags. Any conspicuous movement sends a machine gun on the other side rattling for minutes on end. We must be prepared for surprise attacks at any moment. The whole regiment is in a peculiar state. After a while, being ready for combat twenty-four hours a day is much like being totally paralyzed. At the same time, it often stays quiet for days, so quiet that we forget the constant threat to our lives. Apathy takes hold of our minds and bodies. Some lads sit for hours, staring at nothing in particular, as if they have willed themselves blind. The earth warms up; after the chilly morning hours, vapor rises from the miry fields, which shine in the strange light. A blanket of lapwings ripples over the horizon; sometimes we hear the hoarse cawing of wheeling crows by a line of trees; in the sultry afternoon we hear seagulls in the distance; but otherwise our world seems devoid of animals—that is, except for the rats that infest our trenches. They are everywhere, their shrill squeaking never stops, they dash between our feet, they gnaw on anything they can get their teeth into, they stink, and they mate, bear young, and flourish, eating our biscuits and gnawing on our dead comrades, walking over your face at night, and whenever you knock one dead, five others take its place. Sometimes we roast them, but their flesh is vile, muddy, and gooey. A commander roars that we’ll catch the plague. We spit out the revolting meat and rinse our mouths with brackish water.

  Rations arrive at night and have become increasingly scarce—tinned food, soggy biscuits, no vegetables or fruit, hardly ever any fresh meat, now and then a damp, stale loaf of bread, and unclean water in dented canteens that reek of iron. After a few days in the trenches, my gums are bleeding again, and a few days later my diarrhea is back. White clouds glide overhead like the backdrop to some idyllic scene. We occasionally have an hour’s rest and lie daydreaming in a spot where grass is starting to grow again, propped up on one elbow, enjoying the scent of the spring and fresh greenery. But mostly we inhale the odor of rat piss, the stench of wet straw, and the improvised open latrines. We would be better off if we could burn the contaminated litter and rotting scraps, but the smallest wisp of smoke provokes a frenzied salvo. After a few days of peace and quiet, an officer visits the trenches, bellows that this is no town fair, grabs a rifle, and deliberately fires several shots into the air, setting off another hellish onslaught of German fire. It is like the wrath of God, minus God: every action is weighed in some unfathomable balance, and at any time, the most trivial movement may be punishable by death. The slightest misjudgment could easily be the last judgment. Not that this makes death trivial, but dying does seem more absurd than ever—the hellish pain, the formless horrors that bulge out of the body, the unbearable wailing of the lads in their final moments, their hands on their torn-up bodies as they clutch at their own entrails and moan for their mothers. They are children, countless wasted boys of barely twenty, who should be out in the sun, living their lives, but have sunk into the muck here instead.

  I pray every day. Like an automaton, I drone prayers without end, because the rhythm of prayer, more than any unshakable faith, helps me through the bouts of despair and mortal fear. The others try to scrounge scarce luxuries, a plug of tobacco or a slug of filthy distilled brandy, which they obtain from each other through extortionate barter: your wristwatch for a glass of brandy or ten cigarettes—trades of that kind, all through the days and frigid nights, as the booming of the guns resonates in our rumbling guts. I cling to the only thing that ties me to my far-off childhood: my father’s pocket watch, which by some miracle is still running. It ticks in my pocket like a second heart, and when I take it in my hands, I see the fresco in Liverpool, and I speak to my father in my thoughts, as long as it takes for my heart to calm down and beat with the soothing rhythm of his timepiece.

  —

  What remains to us here, behind the Yser, is not much more than a strip of land almost impossible to defend; a few rain-soaked trenches around razed villages; roads blown to smithereens, unusable by any vehicle; a creaky old horse cart we have to haul ourselves, loaded with crates of damp ammunition that are constantly on the verge of sliding into a canal, forcing us to slog like madmen for every ten yards of progress as we stifle our warning cries; the snarling officers in the larger dugouts, walled off with boards, where the privates have to bail water every day and brush the perpetual muck off their superiors’ boots; the endless crouching as we walk the trenches, grimy and smelly; our louse-ridden uniforms; our assholes burning with irritation
because we have no clean water for washing them after our regular attacks of diarrhea; our stomach cramps as we crawl over heavy clods of earth like trolls in some gruesome fairy tale; the evening sun slanting down over the barren expanse; infected fingers torn by barbed wire; the startling memory of another, improbable life, when a thrush bursts into song in a mulberry bush or a spring breeze carries the smell of grassy fields from far behind the front line, and we throw ourselves flat on our bellies again as howitzers open fire out of nowhere, the crusts of bread in our hands falling into the sludge at the boot-mashed bottom of the stinking trench.

  Just over our heads, we suddenly hear the small aircraft flown by our two airmen, our heroes Coppens and D’Oultremont, skimming over the enemy positions, throwing shells, then ascending as fast as those rickety machines will go, quickly veering around, firing while under fire, and always escaping at the last moment, leaving the Germans to gnash their teeth and plot vengeance in their rancorous, entrenched strongholds, their impregnable fortifications and deadly machine-gun nests beyond the still surface of the river. Many of the men feel weak and fatalistic; they sing to keep up their courage; and we wake up in the midst of an earsplitting racket or fall asleep at the first rays of sunlight, worn out by the paranoia that afflicts our ranks by night. Already, several boys have potted their own pals when spooked by an unexpected noise at dusk. It gnaws at us, we can’t go on, we must go on.

  —

  Oddly enough, my spirits are not usually bad at all. On the contrary, fresh energy flows from some inexplicable wellspring every day. It’s not just soldiering on, but pure, absurd vitality: the strong bonds of friendship between the lads, their crude humor and stupid jokes that often have us all leaning against the filthy trench wall, hiccupping with irrepressible laughter, until again, someone is careless for a moment and gets his hand shot off and we have to stifle his cries of pain by stuffing a rag in his mouth, as the officers in their rickety shed keep hissing, Silence! Silence là-bas!