No Man's Land (39 page)

At the same time, however, I felt that not even I myself possessed such inner courage. Indeed, I wouldn't have been at all surprised if my lips were being sealed by the War Cross, my tongue being tied in knots by my second stripe.

Meanwhile, a voice did speak out. It came from the rear of the gallery during those difficult moments we were all experiencing.

‘Sir, if you please…'

A rustling, a stirring. The mass of soldiers squeezed itself together even tighter than before and opened an aisle down which came a short private with curly hair and squarish shoulders. Vasilios Athanasios Alimberis. Speaking slowly, and searching for the proper expressions, he made the following declaration:

‘I respectfully inform you, Captain, that I am faint-hearted, and I earnestly request that I may be left behind when the attack takes place.'

‘Do you mean to say you're afraid?'

The captain asked this in a tone of near-astonishment, as though actually insulted that such a declaration should be heard in his company. Alimberis answered, more boldly now, a confessional tone entering his heavy, boorish speech:

‘That's what I mean, Captain. Yes, afraid. I'm a carpenter, just a simple carpenter, you understand. I'm still single, because I have my old mother and four sisters to support – a hopeless business to be sure. I haven't even been able to marry off the oldest yet. They sold our little farm, the only thing our father left us when he died, and for the time being they're eating up the proceeds. I've got them on my mind day and night; I can't think of anything else. Tell me, what will become of five women with no means of support, if the war lasts much longer?… In my whole life I've never quarreled with a single soul. I don't have the courage to kill. Every time I hear a shell, I feel like I'm giving up the ghost. I shiver; you'd think I was freezing. I might faint at the sight of blood. But work – nothing but the best. Give me all you like; I'm at your service, with pleasure! I can run a lathe. Hand me some wood and I'll turn you out the most ingenious things you've ever seen, absolutely first class… Please forgive me, Captain, for making bold to tell you all this. You see, I've spoken as in the confessional. We all know you to be a man of good heart. That's why I said to myself, Let's tell him the whole truth, seeing that he's ordered us to, and he'll forgive me.'

Vasilios Athanasios Alimberis spoke these words and then fell silent. He had remained at rigid attention the whole time, motionless except for his fluttering eyelids. Behind his coarse pronunciation I felt that I heard the muted, tender tones of another voice which had died. Yes, what I heard was the painful lamentation of Gighandis – the only difference being that he, lacking Alimberis's extreme simplicity and possessing an ego whose multifarious weaknesses had been cultivated to an incredible degree, would never have yielded up the unpardonable truth about himself to so many people.

No one knew what would happen next. Alimberis remained at attention. His innocent eyes, fixed directly upon the captain, were awaiting some response which assuredly would be crucial for his life. All the rest of us were awaiting that response too, since very likely it would have repercussions for others as well. Outside, the cannonade was still bellowing away maniacally. The captain grimaced, deep in thought. His hands were behind his back and he was thinking – but he certainly was not thinking pleasant thoughts. Ugly wrinkles creased his ruddy features and a flash of harsh cruelty passed across his eyes as he slowly lifted his gaze from Alimberis's feet and paraded it gradually up his entire body until it halted inside the carpenter's eyes. This stare into the eyes lasted just a moment. Then the captain smiled courteously (Alimberis returned the smile, mirror-like), motioned the soldier to stand at ease, and commanded: ‘Sergeant Pavlelis!'

‘Here, Captain.'

‘You will accompany the second patrol when it leaves. You will take four men from your platoon and convey Private Alimberis through the exit
boyau
to the second row of barbed wire. There you will bind him to the steel post which stands to the right of the entanglement's ingress, where he shall remain – in order to grow accustomed to shellfire – until I send someone to bring him back.' (Then, as though by way of explanation:) ‘It's just a question of habituation, this. Getting it out of one's system, that's all. Then you're not afraid any more.'

The captain's very first words had turned Alimberis pale as wax. Now he held out his hands and cast terrified glances first at the captain, then at Sergeant Pavlelis, after which he began to stammer rapidly and in great confusion, his eyes filled with tears:

‘You couldn't do that. Captain, Sir… I respectfully inform you… no, you wouldn't do that to me, Sir… you'll take pity.'

‘But it's not anything you need be frightened about, as you seem to think,' said the captain. ‘You won't get the slightest scratch, I assure you. The place is hidden behind some bushes, quite aside from the fact that our friends happen to be pounding us on the left flank just now. I'm trying to help you get it out of your system, don't you see? Tomorrow, never fear, you'll come back to us a real champ. Greece has lots of good carpenters. Well, now they've all got to become good soldiers… And there's no call, if you please, for snivelling and tears. Men at war, Private Alimberis, do not cry!'

Alimberis wiped his eyes with his huge hands and answered:

‘I'm crying for myself, Captain, and I'm crying for five women too…'

Late that night, Sergeant Pavlelis presented himself at the captain's dugout, his hand raised in salute.

‘Your orders have been carried out, Sir.'

‘My orders?'

‘Concerning Private Alimberis. We bound him to the post at the ingress to the second row of barbed wire, just as you commanded.'

‘How did he behave? Did he offer any resistance?'

‘None at all. He just kept pleading with us, blubbering away. He said he'd die if we left him alone out there in the darkness with all those rockets. I felt sorry for him, to tell you the truth. Every shell that passes overhead makes him jump clear out of his skin.'

*

Who knows what tragedy unfolded out there at the ingress to the second row of barbed wire, during the night. The darkness was so thick, probably even God himself was unable to witness it.

Two men went out at dawn to bring Alimberis back. They found him completely calm. His arms, bound at the elbows behind the post, were bloody from the rope and the barbed wire. He was leaning back against the post, his head resting on his left shoulder. When they released him he sat down on the ground and studied his hands, first the palms then the backs. Next, he commenced to cut off his buttons one by one and to pull out the threads ever so slowly with his fingernails, whistling softly all the while He performed this task with the utmost care. The soldiers, who still had not understood, kept telling him: ‘Let's get a move on before daylight comes and you get us in trouble. You can do your mending in your dugout. Looks like they've really made a man out of you at last.' Alimberis seemed not to hear. Bending down in the half-darkness, they saw him close at hand, clearly, and only then did they understand. They grasped him beneath the armpits. With one in front dragging and the other in back pushing, they got him into the exit
boyau
and brought him from there to the trench. He whistled the whole way. Afterwards, he continued to whistle, always unraveling his clothes. When he finally gave this up his lips remained puckered in the same position, as though still whistling. Today, he was sent to the hospital. To arrive there you have to negotiate an exposed pass, a section which the enemy bombards if even so much as an ant attempts to cross it. With great difficulty they got him to crouch over and make a run for it. The shells that raced shrieking over his head were unable to instil either fear or interest into his tormented spirit, which had already died. It had been taken out there to the exit at the second row of barbed wire one terrible night during the bombardment, and killed. Why? Because he had dared to let this spirit reveal its true condition.

I feel no love for my captain any longer. I can only pity him – or can I?

STRATIS MYRIVILIS

GAS

from
Life in the Tomb

translated by Peter Bien

F
ROM ALL APPEARANCES
they've caught wind across the way of the great undertaking which we are organizing in our front lines and in the supply stations behind us. For three days now, enemy planes have been operating over our positions with admirable bravery and daring. In all the raids the sky fills with little cotton-like clouds which sprout everywhere and follow behind each enemy aircraft like a flock of lambs. These are the shells from our anti-aircraft batteries bursting high in the blue sky. Occasionally, one of the metallic war-birds is brought down. Three mornings ago a lone German bomber engaged seven allied fighters above our lines. It escaped intact after downing an English plane, which fell from the top of the sky, howling as it descended (as though in pain) and trailing a comet of pitch-black smoke behind it. The pilot's body worked loose and fell straight downward like some kind of black thing, whereas the airplane kept burning and weeping until it crashed a mile away. On another day two German planes came and trained their sights on a huge observation-balloon which hovered in the air like a colossal yellow kidney, permanently moored to a small humpish mountain. A bullet found it, igniting the hydrogen inside, and the observer who was in its basket plunged to the ground out of a majestic fire whose flaming tongue licked the heavens, fluttered for a moment like a sheet of gold, and then abruptly died out. The observer was a young French major. He lived for a short time, and with his last breaths he begged his Command to tell his brother, who was serving in France, not to remain in the forces any longer but to go and stay with their mother. Of her four sons, this brother was the only one left.

*

The offensive is now the one great topic of conversation in the trenches. Apparently the hour is approaching. And apparently the enemy are fully expecting us. These last few days their artillery batteries have been literally maniacal in their attempt to eradicate our trenches – especially in the mornings, when the whole universe seems to be falling apart. The men have come to display a melancholy fatalism when they discuss the impending events. Everyone knows that he is bound to play a part, like it or not.

Two days ago, at dawn, the Bulgarians started bombarding us with time-fire projectiles and asphyxiant gas, combined. It was our first opportunity to experience the latter weapon in actual use. True, we had heard of it previously as a kind of legend, thanks to the theoretical lectures delivered to us before we buried ourselves in the trenches. Since then, our gasmasks had been an almost senseless luxury, indeed a troublesome one, since their containers, suspended awkwardly from our belts at the end of a cord, bang relentlessly against our thighs and make noise as they strike our rifles.

About a dozen friends were gathered in my dugout telling stories when the initial gas bombs landed, making a special type of hollow sound. We took them at first for common shells which had plunged into some boggish area and failed to explode. Several of the men even shouted out the customary mock – ‘New fuse needed! Take aim, boys!' – and then returned to their storytelling as if nothing had happened.

Afterwards we caught a whiff of some scent in the air. It was an extremely light and pleasant aroma resembling bitter-almond. The concentration soon increased, however, and before long the air was acrid, pungently sour, poisoned. In an instant the trench hummed with sudden stirrings. A pandemonium of cries, the stupefied confusion of shrieks and commands.

‘Gas! Gas!' shouted the N. C. O.s maniacally. ‘Masks everyone! Your masks!'

But practically none of us had his mask ready to hand. Those who chanced to be visiting in someone else's dugout at that moment, far from their kits, had an especially bad time of it. What followed was a tragedy of mass confusion. Most of the men attempted to flee my dugout. It's a deep one, you see, and thus more and more of the gas – which is heavier than air – kept settling inside and filling it. But how could anyone stick even his nose out into the trench? It was guaranteed suicide. The sky out there was raining lead and steel, the time fuses just waiting for each man to scamper out of his dugout so that they could smash him head-on; the ‘bonbonnières' were bursting at a fixed height over our lines and scattering a thick hail of lead upon anyone who dared emerge. So all the men retreated back into the shelter. Climbing over one another like drunkards or lunatics, they dug their fists into eyes that were smarting horribly and flooding with tears as though sprinkled with red pepper. Their noses and mouths (which were locked tight) they thrust so deeply beneath blankets that they were in danger of suffocating. A painful clawing in the throat and nose made everyone bellow with a harsh cough while the mud-covered hands kept furiously rubbing enflamed eyes. It was a sight whose unspeakable bestiality I could never have imagined before I actually saw it. In my own case, I had managed to find my mask in time, searching blindly with eyes squeezed tight. Soon, I was staring through its clouded lenses, overcome by the unheard-of horror and listening to the agony of my tormented comrades all of whom were rolling about in one frenzied mass of pale, blinded, mud-besplattered humanity, rolling about and bellowing as though in the last throes of rabies. Howling, they bit into their greatcoats and blankets. Their heads groped about and knocked against each other inside this skein of tangled bodies, like the heads of newly-born puppies when their eyes are still sealed and they search in chaos, using the sensitivity to touch possessed by their naked snouts. I was glued against the shelter's partition-wall pressing my palms tightly against the mask and overcome to such a degree by fear and pain that I could give no assistance whatsoever to anyone. If an enemy soldier had entered our dugout at that point, one single enemy soldier, he would have been able to polish us all off without the slightest difficulty. We would have sat there and allowed him to slaughter us just as we were, with our blinded eyes, powerless to defend our lives, and weeping like little girls. Several might even have thanked him profusely for delivering them from this torment.