Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  ‘The human race?’ the corporal said.

  ‘Sure,’ the other said. ‘You might not think it to look at him, but he can move in the dark as quiet as a ghost and even see in it like a cat; turn this light off for a second and he will have that lighter out of your pocket and you wont even know it —— So he was in too now — —’

  ‘He learned that fast?’ the corporal said.

  ‘Of course we had to be a little careful about his hands. He never meant nothing, see: he just didn’t know himself how strong they were, like that night last month.’

  ‘So you got along fine then,’ the corporal said.

  ‘It was duck soup. — So he was in too now and now he could even ride sometimes, with the government paying for it, getting closer and closer to Paris now; not much over a year and we were all the way up to Verdun, that any boche will tell you is right next door to Paris — —’

  ‘And still doing all right,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Why not? If you cant trust your money to a bank in peacetime, where else can you put it in a war except up the chimney or under the mattress or inside the clock? Or anywhere else you thought it was hidden for that matter because it didn’t matter to us; Horse here has a nose for a ten-franc note like a pig for a truffle. Until that night last month and that was the old dame’s fault; all she needed to do was tell us where it was and then lay quiet and keep her mouth shut but that didn’t suit her, she had to lay there in the bed hollering her head off until Horse here had to shut her up — you know: no harm intended: just to squeeze her throat a little until we could have a little peace and quiet to hunt for it in. Only we forgot about the hands, and when I got back — —’

  ‘Got back?’ the corporal said.

  ‘I was downstairs hunting for the money. — got back, it was too late. So they caught us. And you’d have thought that would have satisfied them, especially as they even got the money back — —’

  ‘You found the money?’ the corporal said.

  ‘Sure. While he was keeping her quiet. — But no, that wasn’t enough — —’

  ‘You found the money and had got away with it, and then turned around and came back?’

  ‘What?’ the other said.

  ‘Why did you change your mind?’ the corporal said. After a second the other said:

  ‘Fag me again.’ The corporal gave him another cigarette. ‘Thanks,’ he said. The corporal extended the lighter. ‘Thanks,’ the other said. He snapped it and lit the cigarette and snuffed the lighter; again his two hands began the rapid and involuted gesture then stopped and in the same motion one of the hands tossed the lighter back to the corporal, the arms crossed again, palms to opposite elbows, the cigarette bobbing while he talked. ‘Where was I? oh yes. — But that didn’t suit them; just to take us out in a decent and peaceful way and shoot us wasn’t enough; they had to take Horse here off in a cellar somewhere and scare the daylights out of him. Justice, see? Protecting our rights. Just catching us wasn’t enough; we got to insist we did it. Just me saying so wasn’t enough; Horse too has got to holler it to high heaven — whatever that means. But it’s all right now. They cant stop us now.’ He turned and clapped the second man a hard quick blow on the back: ‘Paris tomorrow morning, kid. Fasten on to that.’

  The door opened. It was the same sergeant again. He did not enter, saying to the corporal: ‘Once more’ and then stood and held the door until the corporal had passed him. Then he closed and locked it. This time it was the office of the prison commandant himself and what he — the corporal — assumed to be just another N.C.O. until he saw, arranged on the cleared desk, the utensils for the Last Sacrament — urn ewer stole candles and crucifix — and only then remarked the small embroidered cross on the coat of the man standing beside them, the other sergeant closing that door too between them so that he and the priest were alone, the priest lifting his hand to inscribe into the invisible air the invisible Passion while the corporal paused for a moment just inside the door, not surprised yet either: just once more alert, looking at him: at which moment a third person in the room would have remarked that they were almost of an age.

  ‘Come in, my son,’ the priest said.

  ‘Good evening, Sergeant,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Cant you say Father?’ the priest said.

  ‘Of course,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Then say it,’ the priest said.

  ‘Of course, Father,’ the corporal said. He came on into the room, looking quietly and rapidly again at the sacred implements on the desk while the priest watched him.

  ‘Not that,’ the priest said. ‘Not yet. I came to offer you life.’

  ‘So he sent you,’ the corporal said.

  ‘He?’ the priest said. ‘What he can you mean, except the Giver of all life? Why should He send me here to offer you what He has already entrusted you with? Because the man you imply, for all his rank and power, can only take it from you. Your life was never his to give you because for all his stars and braid he too before God is just one more pinch of rotten and ephemeral dust. It was neither of them which sent me here: not the One who has already given you life, nor the other who never had yours nor any other life within his gift. It was duty which sent me here. Not this—’ for an instant his hand touched the small embroidered cross on his collar ‘ — not my cloth, but my belief in Him; not even as His mouthpiece but as a man — —’

  ‘A French man?’ the corporal said.

  ‘All right,’ the priest said. ‘Yes, a Frenchman if you like. — commanded me here to command — not ask, offer: command — you to keep the life which you never had and never will have the refusal of, to save another one.’

  ‘To save another one?’ the corporal said.

  ‘The commander of your regiment’s division,’ the priest said. ‘He will die too, for what all the world he knows — the only world he does know because it was the one he dedicated his life to — will call his failure, where you will die for what you anyway will call a victory.’

  ‘So he did send you,’ the corporal said. ‘For blackmail.’

  ‘Beware,’ the priest said.

  ‘Then dont tell me this,’ the corporal said. ‘Tell him. If I can save Gragnon’s life only by not doing something you tell me I already cant and never could do anyway. Tell him then. I dont want to die either.’

  ‘Beware,’ the priest said.

  ‘That wasn’t who I meant,’ the corporal said. ‘I meant — —’

  ‘I know whom you meant,’ the priest said. ‘That’s why I said Beware. Beware Whom you mock by reading your own mortal’s pride into Him Who died two thousand years ago in the postulate that man shall never never never, need never never never, hold suzerainty over another’s life and death — absolved you and the man you mean both of that terrible burden: you of the right to and he of the need for, suzerainty over your life; absolved poor mortal man forever of the fear of the oppression, and the anguish of the responsibility, which suzerainty over human fate and destiny would have entailed on him and cursed him with, when He refused in man’s name the temptation of that mastery, refused the terrible temptation of that limitless and curbless power when He answered the Temptor: Render unto caesar the things which are caesar’s. — I know,’ he said quickly, before the corporal could have spoken: ‘To Chaulnesmont the things which are Chaulnesmont’s. Oh yes, you’re right; I’m a Frenchman first. And so now you can even cite the record at me, cant you? All right. Do it.’

  ‘The record?’ the corporal said.

  ‘The Book,’ the priest said. The corporal looked at him. ‘You mean you dont even know it?’

  ‘I cant read,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Then I’ll cite for you, plead for you,’ the priest said. ‘It wasn’t He with His humility and pity and sacrifice that converted the world, it was pagan and bloody Rome which did it with His martyrdom; furious and intractable dreamers had been bringing that same dream out of Asia Minor for three hundred years until at last one found a caesar foo
lish enough to crucify him. And you are right. But then so is he (I dont mean Him now, I mean the old man in that white room yonder onto whose shoulders you are trying to slough and shirk your right and duty for free will and decision). Because only Rome could have done it, accomplished it, and even He (I do mean Him now) knew it, felt and sensed this, furious and intractable dreamer though He was. Because He even said it Himself: On this rock I found My church, even while He didn’t — and never would — realise the true significance of what He was saying, believing still that He was speaking poetic metaphor, synonym, parable — that rock meant unstable inconstant heart, and church meant airy faith. It wasn’t even His first and favorite sycophant who read that significance, who was also ignorant and intractable like Him and even in the end got himself also electrocuted by the dream’s intractable fire, like Him. It was Paul, who was a Roman first and then a man and only then a dreamer and so of all of them was able to read the dream correctly and to realise that, to endure, it could not be a nebulous and airy faith but instead it must be a church, an establishment, a morality of behavior inside which man could exercise his right and duty for free will and decision, not for a reward resembling the bed-time tale which soothes the child into darkness, but the reward of being able to cope peacefully, hold his own, with the hard durable world in which (whether he would ever know why or not wouldn’t matter either because now he could cope with that too) he found himself. Not snared in that frail web of hopes and fears and aspirations which man calls his heart, but fixed, established, to endure, on that rock whose synonym was the seeded capital of that hard durable enduring earth which man must cope with somehow, by some means, or perish. So you see, he is right. It wasn’t He nor Peter, but Paul who, being only one-third dreamer, was two-thirds man and half of that a Roman, could cope with Rome. Who did more; who, rendering unto caesar, conquered Rome. More: destroyed it, because where is that Rome now? until what remains but that rock, that citadel. Render unto Chaulnesmont. Why should you die?’

  ‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

  ‘To save another life, which your dream will electrocute,’ the priest said.

  ‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Remember—’ the priest said. ‘No, you cant remember, you dont know it, you cant read. So I’ll have to be both again: defender and advocate. Change these stones to bread, and all men will follow Thee. And He answered, Man cannot live by bread alone. Because He knew that too, intractable and furious dreamer though He was: that He was tempted to tempt and lead man not with the bread, but with the miracle of that bread, the deception, the illusion, the delusion of that bread; tempted to believe that man was not only capable and willing but even eager for that deception, that even when the illusion of that miracle had led him to the point where the bread would revert once more to stone in his very belly and destroy him, his own children would be panting for the opportunity to grasp into their hands in their turn the delusion of that miracle which would destroy them. No no, listen to Paul, who needed no miracle, required no martyrdom. Save that life. Thou shalt not kill.’

  ‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Take your own tomorrow, if you must,’ the priest said. ‘But save his now.’

  ‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Power,’ the priest said. ‘Not just power over the mere earth offered by that temptation of simple miracle, but that more terrible one over the universe itself — that terrible power over the whole universe which that mastery over man’s mortal fate and destiny would have given Him had He not cast back into the Temptor’s very teeth that third and most terrible temptation of immortality: which if He had faltered or succumbed would have destroyed His Father’s kingdom not only on the earth but in heaven too because that would have destroyed heaven since what value in the scale of man’s hope and aspiration or what tensile hold or claim on man himself could that heaven own which could be gained by that base means — blackmail: man in his turn by no more warrant than one single precedent casting himself from the nearest precipice the moment he wearied of the burden of his free will and decision, the right to the one and the duty of the other, saying to, challenging his Creator: Let me fall — if You dare?’

  ‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Save that other life. Grant that the right of free will is in your own death. But your duty to choose is not yours. It’s his. It’s General Gragnon’s death.’

  ‘Tell him that,’ the corporal said. They looked at one another. Then the priest seemed to make a terrible faint and convulsive effort, whether to speak or not to speak was still not clear even when he said, like a sort of gesture, a valedictory not to defeat nor despair nor even desperation, but as though to abnegation itself:

  ‘Remember that bird.’

  ‘So he did send you here,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Yes,’ the priest said. ‘He sent for me. To render unto caesar—’ He said: ‘But he came back.’

  ‘Came back?’ the corporal said. ‘He?’

  ‘The one who denied you,’ the priest said. ‘That turned his back on you. Freed himself of you. But he came back. And now there are eleven of them again.’ He moved until he was facing the corporal. ‘Save me too,’ he said. Then he was on his knees before the corporal, his hands clasped fist into fist at his breast. ‘Save me,’ he said.

  ‘Get up, Father,’ the corporal said.

  ‘No,’ the priest said. He fumbled a moment inside the breast of his coat and produced his prayer-book, dog-eared and stained too from the front lines; it seemed to open automatically on the narrow purple ribbon of its marker as the priest reversed it and extended it upward. ‘Read it to me then,’ he said. The corporal took the book.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘The office for the dying,’ the priest said. ‘But you cant read, can you?’ he said. He took the book back and now clasped it closed between his hands at his breast, his head bowed still. ‘Save me then,’ he said.

  ‘Get up,’ the corporal said, reaching down to grasp the priest’s arm, though the priest had already begun to rise, standing now, fumbling a little clumsily as he put the book back inside his coat; as he turned, stiffly and clumsily still, he seemed to stumble slightly and was apparently about to fall even, though again he had recovered himself before the corporal touched him, going toward the door now, one hand already lifted toward it or toward the wall or perhaps just lifted, as though he were blind too, the corporal watching him, until the corporal said: ‘You’ve forgotten your gear.’

  The priest stopped, though he didn’t turn yet. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So I did.’ Then he said, ‘So I have.’ Then he turned and went back to the desk and gathered the articles up — basin ewer stole and crucifix — and huddled them clumsily into or onto one arm and extended his hand toward the candles and then stopped again, the corporal watching him.

  ‘You can send back for them,’ the corporal said.

  ‘Yes,’ the priest said. ‘I can send back for them,’ and turned and went again to the door and stopped again and after a moment began to raise his hand toward it, though the corporal now had already passed him, to strike two or three rapping blows with his knuckles on the wood, which a moment later swung open and back, revealing the sergeant, the priest standing again for a second or two clasping to his breast the huddled symbols of his mystery. Then he roused. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can send back for them,’ and passed through the door; and this time he didn’t pause even when the sergeant overtook him and said:

  ‘Shall I take them to the chapel, Father?’

  ‘Thank you,’ the priest said, relinquishing them: and now he was free, walking on; and now he was even safe: outside, out of doors with only the spring darkness, the spring night soft and myriad above the blank and lightless walls and between them too, filling the empty topless passage, alley, at the end of which he could see a section of the distant wire fence and the catwalk spaced by the rigid down-glare of the lights, these spaced in their turn by t
he red eyes of the Senegalese sentries’ cigarettes; and beyond that the dark plain, and beyond the plain in turn the faint unsleeping glow of the sleepless city; and now he could remember when he had seen them first, finally seen them, overtook them at last, two winters ago up near the Chemin des Dames — behind Combles, Souchez, he couldn’t remember — the cobbled Place in the mild evening (no: mild evening, it was only autumn yet, a little while still before there would begin at Verdun that final winter of the doomed and accursed race of man) already empty again because again he had just missed them by minutes, the arms the hands pointing to show him, the helpful and contradictory voices giving him directions, too many of them in fact, too many helpful voices and too many directions, until at last one man walked with him to the edge of the village to show him the exact route and even point out to him the distant huddle of the farm itself — a walled yard enclosing house byre and all, twilight now and he saw them, eight of them at first standing quietly about the kitchen stoop until he saw two more of them, the corporal and another, sitting on the stoop in baize or oilcloth aprons, the corporal cleaning a fowl, a chicken, the other peeling potatoes into a bowl while beside, above them stood the farmwife with a pitcher and a child, a girl of ten or so, with both hands full of mugs and tumblers; then while he watched, the other three came out of the byre with the farmer himself and crossed the yard carrying the pails of milk.

  Nor did he approach nor even make his presence known: just watching while the woman and the child exchanged the pitcher and the drinking vessels for the fowl and bowl and the pails of milk and carried the food on into the house and the farmer filled from the pitcher the mugs and tumblers which the corporal held and passed in turn and then they drank in ritual salutation — to peaceful work, to the peaceful end of day, to anticipation of the peaceful lamplit meal, whatever it was — and then it was dark, night, night indeed because the second time was at Verdun which was the freezing night of France and of man too since France was the cradle of the liberty of the human spirit, in the actual ruins of Verdun itself, within actual hearing range of the anguish of Gaud and Valaumont; not approaching this time either but only to stand from a distance watching, walled by the filth- and anguish-stained backs from where the thirteen would be standing in the circle’s center, talking or not, haranguing or not, he would never know, dared not know; thinking Yes, even then I durst not; even if they did not need to talk or harangue since simply to believe was enough; thinking, Yes, there were thirteen then and even now there are still twelve; thinking, Even if there were only one, only he, would be enough, more than enough, thinking Just that one to stand between me and safety, me and security, between me and peace; and although he knew the compound and its environs well, for a moment he was dis-oriented as sometimes happens when you enter a strange building in darkness or by one door and then emerge from it in light or by another even though this was not the case here, thinking in a sort of quiet unamazement Yes, I probably knew from the moment he sent for me what door I should have to emerge from, the only exit left for me. So it only lasted for a moment or two or possibly even less than that: one infinitesimal vertiginous lurch and wall stone and brick resumed once more its ordered and forever repudiated place; one corner, one turn, and the sentry was where he had remembered he would be, not even pacing his beat but just standing at ease with his grounded rifle beside the small iron gate.