No Man's Land (74 page)

From the position the youth was lying in, it was impossible for either of the men to see that he was weeping. Indeed, had Elston seen it, he would undoubtedly have killed him. There was something terrible stirring in this weasel's blood. He knew not what it was. But there was a strange and powerful force possessing him, and it was going to use him as its instrument. He felt a power growing in him. There was something repugnant, something revolting in those eyes, in their leer, and in the curled lips. Was it that in that moment itself, all the rottenness that was his life had suddenly shot up as filth from a sewer, leaving him helpless in everything but the act he was going to commit? O'Garra was watching Elston. He too seemed to have sensed this something terrible.

His gaze wandered from Elston to the young German. No word was spoken. The silence was intense. Horrible. These three men, who but an hour ago seemed to be charged for action, eager and vital, looked as helpless as children now. Was it that this fog surrounding them had pierced its way into their hearts and souls? Or was it that something in their very nature had suffered collapse?

One could not say that they sat, or merely lay; they just sprawled; each terribly conscious of the other's presence, and in that presence detecting something sinister; something that leered; that goaded and pricked. Each seemed to have lost his faculty of speech. The fog had hemmed them in. Nor could any of them realize their position, where they were, the possibility of establishing contact with other human beings. What was this something that had so hurled them together?

O'Garra looked across to Elston.

‘Elston! Elston! What are we going to do? We must get out of this. Besides, the place stinks. Perhaps we are on very old ground. Rotten ground; mashy muddy ground. Christ, the place must be full of these mangy dead.'

Elston did not answer. And suddenly O'Garra fell upon him, beating him in the face, and screaming out at the top of his voice:

‘Hey. Hey. You lousy son of a bitch. What's your game? Are you trying to make me as rotten as yourself, as cowardly, as lousy? It's you and not this bloody Jerry who is responsible for this. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Jesus Christ Almighty, why don't you answer? Answer. Answer.'

The young German cowered in the bottom of the hole, trembling like a leaf. Terror had seized him. His face seemed to take on different colours, now white, now red, now grey, as if Death were already in the offing. Saliva trickled down his chin.

These changes of colour in the face seemed to pass across it like gusts of wind. Gusts of fear, terror, despair. Once only he glanced up at the now distorted features of the half-crazy Irishman, and made as if to cry out. Once again O'Garra spoke to Elston. Then it was that the Englishman opened his eyes, looked across at his mate, and shouted:

‘O'Garra! O'Garra. Oh, where the funkin' hell are you, O'Garra?'

He stared hard at the Irishman, who, though his lips barely moved, yet uttered sounds:

‘In a bloody madhouse. In a shit hole. Can't you smell the rotten dead? Can you hear? Can you hear? You louse, you bloody rat. Pretending to be asleep and all the while your blasted owl's eyes have been glaring at me. Ugh! Ugh!'

‘Camerade.'

A sigh came from the youth lying at the bottom of the hole. It was almost flute-like, having a liquidity of tone.

‘Ah! *uck you,' growled O'Garra. ‘You're as much to blame as anybody. Yes. Yes. As much to blame as anybody. Who in the name of Jesus asked you to come here? Haven't I that bastard there to look after? The coward. Didn't I have to drag him across the ground during the advance? Yes. YOU. YOU. YOU,' and O'Garra commenced to kick the prisoner in the face until it resembled a piece of raw beef. The prisoner moaned. As soon as O'Garra saw the stream of blood gush forth from the German's mouth, he burst into tears. Elston, too, seemed to have been stirred into action by this furious onslaught on the youth. He kicked the German in the midriff, making him scream like a stuck pig. It was this scream that loosed all the springs of action in the Manchester man. It cut him to the heart, this scream. Impotency and futility seemed as ghouls leering at him, goading him, maddening him.

He started to kick the youth in the face too. But now no further sound came from that inert heap. The Englishman dragged himself across to O'Garra. But the Irishman pushed him off.

‘Get away. I hate you. Hate you. HIM. Everybody. Hate all. Go away. AWAY.'

‘By Jesus I will then,' shouted Elston. ‘Think I'm a bloody fool to sit here with two madmen. I'm going. Don't know where I'll land. But anything is better than this. It's worse than hell.'

He rose to his feet and commenced to climb out of the hole. He looked ahead. Fog. And behind. Fog. Everywhere fog. No sound. No stir. He made a step forward when O'Garra leaped up and dragged him back. Some reason seemed to have returned to him, for he said:

‘Don't go. Stay here. Listen. This state of affairs cannot go on for ever. The fog will lift. Are you listening, and not telling yourself that I am mad? I am not mad. Do you understand? Do you understand? Tell me!'

‘Is it day or night, or has day and night vanished?' asked Elston.

‘It might well be that the whole bloody universe has been hurled into space. The bugger of it is, my watch has stopped. Sit down here. I want to talk. Do you see now? I want to talk. It's this terrible bloody silence that kills me. Listen now. Can you hear anything? No. You can't. But you can hear me speak. Hear that *ucker – moaning down there. They are human sounds. And human sounds are everything now. They can save us. So we must talk. All the while. Without resting, without ceasing. Understand? Whilst we are conscious that we are alive, all is well. Do you see now? Do you see now?'

‘I thought the bloody Jerry was dead,' muttered Elston. ‘Dead, my arse. Come! What'll we talk about? Anything. Everything.'

And suddenly Elston laughed, showing his teeth, which were like a horse's!

‘Remember that crazy house down in Fricourt? Remember that? Just as we started to enter the God-forsaken place, he began to bomb and shell it.'

‘Remember? We both went out in the evening, souveniring. Went into that little white house at the back of the hotel. Remember that?'

‘Well!'

‘Remember young Dollan mounting that old woman? Looked like a bloody witch. I still remember her nearly bald head.'

‘Well!'

‘And you chucked young Dollan off, and got into bed with her yourself.'

‘Was it a long time ago? In this war, d'you mean?'

‘Yes. Are you tapped, or what? Course it was in this bloody war. What the funkin' hell are you thinkin' of, you loony?'

For the first time since they had found themselves in this position, they both laughed. And suddenly Elston looked up into his companion's face, laughed again, and said softly:

‘Well, by Christ, d'you know that laugh has made me want to do something.'

‘Do something?' queried O'Garra.

‘Yes,' replied Elston, and standing over the prisoner in the hole, he pissed all over him. Likewise O'Garra, who began to laugh in a shrill sort of way.

There is a peculiar power about rottenness, in that it feeds on itself, borrows from itself, and its tendency is always downward. That very action had seized the polluted imagination of the Irishman. He was helpless. Rottenness called to him; called to him from the pesty frame of Elston. After the action they both laughed again, but this time louder.

‘Hell!' exclaimed O'Garra. ‘After that I feel relieved. Refreshed. Don't feel tired. Don't feel anything particularly. How do you feel?' he asked.

‘The same,' replied Elston. ‘But I wish to Christ this soddin' fog would lift.'

This desire, this hope that the fog would lift was something burning in the heart, a ceaseless yearning, the restlessness of waters washing against the floodgates of the soul. It fired their minds. It became something organic in the brain. Below them the figure stirred slightly.

‘
Ah!— Ah!—'

‘The *ucker hasn't kicked the bucket yet,' said Elston. He leaned over and rested his two hands on O'Garra's knees. ‘D'you know when I came to examine things; that time I thought you were asleep you know, and you weren't; well I thought hard, and I came to certain conclusions. One of them was this. See that lump of shit in the hole; that Jerry I mean? You do. Well now, he's the cause of everything. Everything. Everything. Don't you think so yourself?'

‘Yes I do,' said the Irishman. ‘That's damn funny, you know. Here is what I thought. I said to myself: “That bastard lying there is the cause of all this.” And piece by piece and thread by thread I gathered up all the inconveniences. All the actions, rebuffs, threats, fatigues, cold nights, lice, toothaches, forced absence from women, nights in trenches up to your knees in mud. Burial parties, mopping-up parties, dead horses, heaps of stale shite, heads, balls, brains, everywhere. All those things. I made the case against him. Now I ask you. Why should he live?'

‘Yes,' shouted Elston. ‘You're right. Why should he? He is the cause of it all. Only for this bloody German we might not have been here. I know where I should have been anyhow. Only for him the fog might have lifted. We might have got back to our own crowd. Yes. Yes. Only for him. Well, there would not have been any barrage, any attack, and bloody war in fact.'

‘Can't you see it for yourself now? Consider. Here we are, an Englishman, and an Irishman, both sitting here like soft fools. See! And we're not the only ones perhaps. One has to consider everything. Even the wife at home. All the other fellows. All the madness, confusion. Through Germans. And here's one of them.'

‘
Ah!—
'

Elston glared down into the gargoyle of a face now visible to them both, the terrible eyes flaring up at the almost invisible sky.

‘Water—
Ah!—
'

A veritable torrent of words fell from Elston's lips.

‘Make the funkin' fog rise and we'll give you anything. Everything. Make the blasted war stop, now, right away. Make all this mud and shite vanish. Will you? You bastards started it. Will you now? See! We are both going mad. We are going to
kill
ourselves.'

‘Kill me—'

‘Go and shite. But for the likes of you we wouldn't be here.'

‘Water—'

In that moment O'Garra was seized by another fit of madness. Wildly, like some terror-stricken and trapped animal, he looked up and around.

‘Fog. Yes fog. FOG. FOG. FOG. FOG. FOG. Jesus sufferin' Christ. FOG. FOG. FOG. HA, HA, HA, HA, HA. In your eyes, in your mouth, on your chest, in your heart. FOG. FOG. Oh hell, we're all going crazy. FOG. FOG.'

‘
There you are!
' screamed Elston into the German's ear, for suddenly seized with panic by the terrific outburst from O'Garra he had fallen headlong into the hole. The eyes seemed to roll in his head, as he screamed: ‘There you are. Can you hear it? You. Can you hear it? You *ucker from München, with your fair hair, and your lovely face that we bashed in for you. Can you hear it? We're trapped here. Through you. Through you and your bloody lot. If only you hadn't come. You baby. You soft stupid little runt. Hey! Hey! Can you hear me?'

The two men now fell upon the prisoner, and with peculiar movements of the hands began to mangle the body. They worried it like mad dogs. The fog had brought about a nearness, that was now driving them to distraction. Elston, on making contact with the youth's soft skin, became almost demented. The velvety touch of the flesh infuriated him. Perhaps it was because Nature had hewn him differently. Had denied him the young German's grace of body, the fair hair, the fine clear eyes that seemed to reflect all the beauty and music and rhythm of the Rhine. Maddened him. O'Garra shouted out:

‘PULL his bloody trousers down.'

With a wild movement Elston tore down the prisoner's trousers.

In complete silence O'Garra pulled out his bayonet and stuck it up the youth's anus. The German screamed.

Elston laughed and said: ‘I'd like to back-scuttle the bugger.'

‘Go ahead,' shouted O'Garra.

‘I tell you what,'said Elston. ‘Let's stick this horse-hair up his penis.'

So they stuck the horse-hair up his penis. Both laughed shrilly. A strange silence followed.

‘Kill the bugger!' screamed O'Garra.

Suddenly, as if instinctively, both men fell away from the prisoner, who rolled over, emitting a single sigh –
Ah
… His face was buried in the soft mud.

‘Elston.'

‘Well,' was the reply.

‘Oh Jesus! Listen. Has the fog risen yet? I have my eyes tight closed. I am afraid.'

‘What are you afraid of? Tell me that. There's buggerall here now. This fellow is dead. Feel his bum. Any part you like. Dead. Dead.'

‘I am afraid of myself. Listen. I have something to ask you. Will you agree with me now to walk out of it? We can't land in a worse place.'

‘My
arse
on you,' growled Elston. ‘Where can we walk? You can't see a finger ahead of you. I tell you what. Let's worry each other to death. Isn't that better than this moaning, this sitting here like soft shits. That time I fell asleep I did it in my pants. It made me get mad with that bugger down there.'

‘A thing like that,' O'Garra laughed once again.

‘Listen,' roared Elston. ‘I tell you we can't move. D'you hear? Do you? Shall I tell you why?

‘It's not because there is no ground on which to walk. No. Not that. It's just that we can't move. We're stuck. Stuck fast. Though we have legs, we can't walk. We have both been seized by something, I can't even cry out. I am losing strength. I don't want to do anything. Nothing at all. Everything is useless. Nothing more to do. Let's end it. Let's worry each other like mad dogs. I had the tooth-ache an hour ago. I wish it would come back. I want something to worry me. Worry me.'