A Fable

by William Faulkner

  Nor was there any reason to take the book to the hut because he might even read some more, entering and then leaving Bridesman’s hut with the book still closed on one finger to mark his place, still strolling; he had never been walking fast anyway and finally stopping, empty and peaceful, only blinking a little, looking out across the empty field, the line of closed hangars, the mess and the office where a few people came and went. Not too many though; apparently Collyer had lifted the ban on Villeneuve Blanche; soon he would be looking at evening too and suddenly he thought of Conventicle but for an instant only and then no more because what could he say to Conventicle or they to each other? ‘Well, Flight, Captain Bridesman tells me one of our battalions put their guns down this morning and climbed out of the trench and through the wire and met a similar unarmed German one until both sides could get a barrage down on them. So all we need now is just to stand by until time to take that jerry general home.’ And then Conventicle: ‘Yes sir. So I heard.’

  And now he was looking at evening, the aftermath of sun, treading no shadow at all now to the petrol tin. Though almost at once he began to hurry a little, remembering not the sidcott but the burning; it had been more than twelve hours now since he left it in the tin and there might not be anything left of it. But he was in time: just the tin itself too hot to touch so that he kicked it over and tumbled the sidcott out, which would have to cool a little too. Which it did: not evening incrementing now but actual night itself, almost summer night this time at home in May; and in the latrine the tree once more was no longer green: only the stink of the sidcott which had lasted, he had wasted that concern, dropping it into the sink where it unfolded as of its own accord into visibility, into one last repudiation—the slow thick invincible smell of the burning itself visible now in creeping overlaps, almost gone now—only a beggar’s crumb but perhaps there had been an instant in the beginning when only a crumb of fire lay on the face of darkness and the falling waters and he moved again, one of the cubicles had a wooden latch inside the door if you were there first and he was and latched the invisible door and drew the invisible pistol from his tunic pocket and thumbed the safety off.

  Again the room was lighted, candelabrum sconce and girandole, curtain and casement once more closed against the swarm-dense city’s unsleeping and anguished murmur; again the old general looked like a gaudy toy in his blanched and glittering solitude, just beginning to crumble the heel of bread into the waiting bowl as the smaller door opened and the youthful aide stood in it. ‘He is here?’ the old general said.

  ‘Yes sir,’ the aide said.

  ‘Let him come in,’ the old general said. ‘Then let nobody else.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ the aide said and went out and closed the door and in a time opened it again; the old general had not moved except to put quietly down beside the bowl the uncrumbled bread, the aide entering and turning stiffly to attention beside the door as the Quartermaster General entered and came on a pace or two and then stopped, paused, the aide going back out the door and drawing it to behind him, the Quartermaster General standing for a moment longer—the gaunt gigantic peasant with his sick face and his hungry and stricken eyes, the two old men looking at one another for another moment, then the Quartermaster General partly raised one hand and dropped it and came on until he faced the table.

  ‘Have you dined?’ the old general said. The other didn’t even answer.

  ‘I know what happened,’ he said. ‘I authorised it, permitted it, otherwise it couldn’t have. But I want you to tell me. Not admit, confess: affirm it, tell me to my face that we did this. Yesterday afternoon a German general was brought across the lines and here, to this house, into this house.’

  ‘Yes,’ the old general said. But the other still waited, inexorable. ‘We did it then,’ the old general said.

  ‘Then this morning an unarmed British battalion met an unarmed German force between the lines until artillery from both sides was able to destroy them both.’

  ‘We did it then,’ the old general said.

  ‘We did it,’ the Quartermaster General said. ‘We. Not British and American and French we against German them nor German they against American and British and French us, but We against all because we no longer belong to us. A subterfuge not of ours to confuse and mislead the enemy nor of the enemy to mislead and confuse us, but of We to betray all since all has had to repudiate us in simple defensive horror; no barrage by us or vice versa to prevent an enemy running over us with bayonets and hand grenades or vice versa, but a barrage by both of We to prevent naked and weaponless hand touching opposite naked and weaponless hand. We, you and I and our whole unregenerate and unregenerable kind; not only you and I and our tight close jealous unchallengeable hierarchy behind this wire and our opposite German one behind that one, but more, worse: our whole small repudiated and homeless species about the earth who not only no longer belong to man but even to earth itself since we have had to make this last base desperate cast in order to hold our last desperate and precarious place on it.’

  ‘Sit down,’ the old general said.

  ‘No,’ the other said. ‘I was standing when I accepted this appointment. I can stand to divest myself of it.’ He thrust one big fleshless hand rapidly inside his tunic then out again, though once more he stood just holding the folded paper in it, looking down at the old general. ‘Because I didn’t just believe in you. I loved you. I believed from that first moment when I saw you in that gate that day forty-seven years ago that you had been destined to save us. That you were chosen by destiny out of the paradox of your background, to be a paradox to your past in order to be free of human past to be the one out of all earth to be free of the compulsions of fear and weakness and doubt which render the rest of us incapable of what you were competent for; that you in your strength would even absolve us of our failure due to our weakness and fears. I dont mean the men out there tonight—’ this time the vast hand holding the folded paper made a single rapid clumsy gesture which indicated, seemed to shape somehow in the brilliant insulate room the whole scope of the murmurous and anguished darkness outside and even as far away as the lines themselves—the wire, the ditches dense and, for this time anyway, silent with dormant guns and amazed and incredulous men, waiting, alerted, confused and incredulous with hope ‘—they dont need you, they are capable of saving themselves, as three thousand of them proved four days ago. They only needed to be defended, protected from you. Not expected to be nor even hope to be: just should have been except that we failed them. Not you this time, who did not even what you would but what you must, since you are you. But I and my few kind, who had rank enough and authority and position enough, as if God Himself had put this warrant in my hand that day against this one three years later, until I failed them and Him and brought it back.’ His hand also jerked, flicked, and tossed the folded paper onto the desk in front of the bowl and jug and the still intact morsel, on either side of which the old general’s veined and mottled hands lay faintly curled at rest. ‘Back to you by hand, as I received it from you. I will have no more of it. I know: by my own token I am too late in returning what I should never have accepted to begin with because even at first I would have known myself incapable of coping with what it was going to entail, if I had only known then what that entailment was going to be. I am responsible. I am responsible, mine is the blame and solely mine; without me and this warrant which you gave me that day three years ago, you could not have done this. By this authority I could have prevented you then, and even afterward I could have stopped it, remanded it. As you—the Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied Armies in France—as Quartermaster General over all embattled Europe west of our and the British and the American wire, I could have decreed that whole zone containing Villeneuve Blanche (or arbitrarily any other point which you might have threatened) at one hundred point one of saturation and forbidden whatever number of men it took to drive those lorries of blank anti-aircraft shells to enter it and even at one hundred absolute of saturation and s
o forbidden that single supernumerary German one to come out of it. But I didn’t. So I was responsible even more than you because you had no choice. You didn’t even do what you would but only what you could since you were incapable of else, born and doomed incapable of else. While I did have a choice between could and would, between shall and must and cannot, between must and dare not, between will do and I am afraid to do: had that choice, and found myself afraid. Oh yes, afraid. But then why shouldn’t I be afraid of you, since you are afraid of man?’

  ‘I am not afraid of man,’ the old general said. ‘Fear implies ignorance. Where ignorance is not, you do not need to fear: only respect. I dont fear man’s capacities, I merely respect them.’

  ‘And use them,’ the Quartermaster General said.

  ‘Beware of them,’ the old general said.

  ‘Which, fear them or not, you should. You someday will. Not I, of course. I’m an old man, finished; I had my chance and failed; who—what—wants or needs me further now? what midden or rubbish heap, least of all that one beside the Seine yonder with its gold hemisphere ravaged from across all of Europe by a lesser one than you since he embroiled himself with all the armies of Europe in order to lose a petty political empire where you have allied all the armies of both hemispheres and finally even the German one too, to lose the world to man.’

  ‘Will you let me speak a moment?’ the old general said.

  ‘Of course,’ the other said. ‘Didn’t I tell you I loved you once? Who can control that? All you dare assume mandate over is oath, contract.’

  ‘You say they do not need me to save themselves from me and us since they themselves will save themselves if they are only let alone, only defended and preserved that long from me and us. How do you think we coped with this in time at time and place—at this particular moment in four whole years of moments, at this particular point in that thousand kilometres of regimental fronts? just by being alert? not only alert at this specific spot and moment but prepared to cope and concentrate and nullify at this specific spot and moment with that which every trained soldier had been trained and taught to accept as a factor in war and battle as he must logistics and climate and failure of ammunition; this, in four long years of fateful and vulnerable moments and ten hundred kilometres of fateful and vulnerable spots—spots and moments fateful and vulnerable because as yet we have found nothing better to man them with than man? How do you think we knew in time? Dont you know how? who, since you believe in man’s capacities, must certainly know them?’

  Now the other had stopped, immobile, looming, vast, his sick and hungry face as though sick anew with foreknowledge and despair. Though his voice was quiet, almost gentle. ‘How?’ he said.

  ‘One of them told us. One of his own squad. One of his close and familiar own—as always. As that or them or at least one among them for whom man sets in jeopardy what he believes to be his life and assumes to be his liberty or his honor, always does. His name was Polchek. He went on sick parade that Sunday midnight and we should have known about it inside an hour except that apparently a traitor too (by all means call him that if you like) had to outface regimental tape. So we might not have learned in time at all until too late, the division commander being himself already an hour before dawn in a forward observation post where he likewise had no business being, except for a lieutenant (a blatant and unregenerate eccentric whose career very probably ended there also since he held the sanctity of his native soil above that of his divisional channels; he will get a decoration of course but no more, the utmost venerability of his beard can only expose that same lieutenant’s insigne) who rang directly through to, and insisted on speaking to someone in authority at, his Army Headquarters. That was how we knew, had even that little time to nullify, get in touch with the enemy and offer him too an alternate to chaos.’

  ‘So I was right,’ the other said. ‘You were afraid.’

  ‘I respect him as an articulated creature capable of locomotion and vulnerable to self-interest.’

  ‘You were afraid,’ the Quartermaster General said. ‘Who with two armies which had already been beaten once and a third one not yet blooded to where it was a calculable quantity, had nevertheless managed to stalemate the most powerful and skillful and dedicated force in Europe, yet had had to call upon that enemy for help against the simple unified hope and dream of simple man. No, you are afraid. And so I am well to be. That’s why I brought it back. There it lies. Touch it, put your hand on it. Or take my word for it that it’s real, the same one, not defiled since the defilement was mine who shirked it in the middle of a battle, and a concomitant of your rank is the right and privilege to obliterate the human instrument of a failure.’

  ‘But can you bring it back here? to me?’ the old general said mildly.

  ‘Why not? Weren’t you the one who gave it to me?’

  ‘But can you?’ the old general said. ‘Dare you? ask me to grant you a favor, let alone accept it from me. This favor,’ the old general said in that gentle and almost inflectionless voice. ‘A man is to die what the world will call the basest and most ignominious of deaths: execution for cowardice while defending his native—anyway adopted—land. That’s what the ignorant world will call it, who will not know that he was murdered for that principle which, by your own bitter self-scoriation, you were incapable of risking death and honor for. Yet you dont demand that life. You demand instead merely to be relieved of a commission. A gesture. A martyrdom. Does it match his?’

  ‘He wont accept that life!’ the other cried. ‘If he does——’ and stopped, amazed, aghast, foreknowing and despaired while the gentle voice went on:

  ‘If he does, if he accepts his life, keeps his life, he will have abrogated his own gesture and martyrdom. If I gave him his life tonight, I myself could render null and void what you call the hope and the dream of his sacrifice. By destroying his life tomorrow morning, I will establish forever that he didn’t even live in vain, let alone die so. Now tell me who’s afraid?’

  Now the other began to turn, slowly, a little jerkily, as though he were blind, turning on until he faced the small door again and stopping not as though he saw it but as if he had located its position and direction by some other and lesser and less exact sense, like smell, the old general watching him until he had completely turned before he spoke:

  ‘You’ve forgotten your paper.’

  ‘Of course,’ the other said. ‘So I have.’ He turned back, jerkily, blinking rapidly; his hand fumbled on the table top for a moment, then it found the folded paper and put it back inside the tunic, and he stood again, blinking rapidly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So I did.’ Then he turned again, a little stiffly still but moving almost quickly now, directly anyhow, and went on across the blanched rug, toward the door; at once it opened and the aide entered, carrying the door with him and already turning into rigid attention, holding it while the Quartermaster General walked toward it, a little stiffly and awkwardly, too big too gaunt too alien, then stopped and half-turned his head and said: ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ the old general said. The other went on, to the door now, almost into it, beginning to bow his head a little as though from long habit already too tall for most doors, stopping almost in the door now, his head still bowed a little even after he turned it not quite toward where the old general sat immobile and gaudy as a child’s toy behind the untouched bowl and jug and the still uncrumbled bread.

  ‘And something else,’ the Quartermaster General said. ‘To say. Something else——’

  ‘With God,’ the old general said.

  ‘Of course,’ the Quartermaster General said. ‘That was it. I almost said it.’

  The door clashed open, the sergeant with his slung rifle entered first, followed by a private carrying his unslung one, unbelievably long now with the fixed bayonet, like a hunter dodging through a gap in a fence. They took position one on either side of the door, the thirteen prisoners turning their thirteen heads as one to watch quietly while two more men carried i
n a long wooden bench-attached mess table and set it in the center of the cell and went back out.

  ‘Going to fatten us up first, huh?’ one of the prisoners said. The sergeant didn’t answer; he was now working at his front teeth with a gold toothpick.

  ‘If the next thing they bring is a tablecloth, the third will be a priest,’ another prisoner said. But he was wrong, although the number of casseroles and pots and dishes (including a small caldron obviously soup) which did come next, followed by a third man carrying a whole basket of bottles and a jumble of utensils and cutlery, was almost as unnerving, the sergeant speaking now though still around, past the toothpick:

  ‘Hold it now. At least let them get their hands and arms out of the way.’ Though the prisoners had really not moved yet to rush upon the table, the food: it was merely a shift, semicircular, poised while the third orderly set the wine (there were seven bottles) on the table and then began to place the cups, vessels, whatever anyone wanted to call them—tin cups, pannikins from mess kits, two or three cracked tumblers, two flagons contrived by bisecting laterally one canteen.

  ‘Dont apologise, garçon,’ the wit said. ‘Just so it’s got a bottom at one end and a hole at the other.’ Then the one who had brought the wine scuttled back to the door after the two others, and out of it; the private with the bayonet dodged his seven-foot-long implement through it again and turned, holding the door half closed for the sergeant.

  ‘All right, you bastards,’ the sergeant said. ‘Be pigs.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, maître,’ the wit said. ‘If we must dine in stink, we prefer it to be our own.’ Then suddenly, in unpremeditated concert as though they had not even planned it or instigated it, they had not even been warned of it but instead had been overtaken from behind by it like wind, they had all turned on the sergeant, or perhaps not even the sergeant, the human guards, but just the rifles and the bayonets and the steel lockable door, not moving, rushing toward them but just yelling at them—a sound hoarse, loud, without language, not of threat or indictment either: just a hoarse concerted affirmation of invincible repudiation which continued for another moment or so even after the sergeant had passed through the door and it had clashed shut again. Then they stopped. Yet they still didn’t rush at the table, still hovering, semicircular, almost diffidently, merely enclosing it, their noses trembling questing like those of rabbits at the odors from it, grimed, filthy, reeking still of the front lines and uncertainty and perhaps despair; unshaven, faces not alarming nor even embittered but harassed—faces of men who had already borne not only more than they expected but than they believed they could and who knew that it was still not over and—with a sort of amazement, even terror—that no matter how much more there would be, they would still bear that too.