A Fable

‘I’m trying to,’ the runner said with that terrible patience. ‘Every man in the battalion owes him his pay for weeks ahead, provided they live long enough to earn it and he lives long enough to collect it from them. He did it by making them all Masons or anyway making them believe they are Masons. He owns them, you see. They cant refuse him. All he will need to do is——’

‘Wait,’ the old Negro said. ‘Wait.’

‘Dont you see?’ the runner said. ‘If all of us, the whole battalion, at least one battalion, one unit out of the whole line to start it, to lead the way—leave the rifles and grenades and all behind us in the trench: simply climb barehanded out over the parapet and through the wire and then just walk on barehanded, not with our hands up for surrender but just open to show that we had nothing to hurt, harm anyone; not running, stumbling: just walking forward like free men,—just one of us, one man; suppose just one man, then multiply him by a battalion; suppose a whole battalion of us, who want nothing except just to go home and get themselves clean into clean clothes and work and drink a little beer in the evening and talk and then lie down and sleep and not be afraid. And maybe, just maybe that many Germans who dont want anything more too, or maybe just one German who doesn’t want more than that, to put his or their rifles and grenades down and climb out too with their hands empty too not for surrender but just so every man could see there is nothing in them to hurt or harm either——’

‘Suppose they dont,’ the old Negro said. ‘Suppose they shoot at us.’ But the runner didn’t even hear the us. He was still talking.

‘Wont they shoot at us tomorrow anyway, as soon as they have recovered from the fright? as soon as the people at Chaulnesmont and Paris and Poperinghe and whoever it was in that German aeroplane this afternoon have had time to meet and compare notes and decide exactly where the threat, danger is, and eradicate it and then start the war again: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow until the last formal rule of the game has been fulfilled and discharged and the last ruined player removed from sight and the victory immolated like a football trophy in a club-house show-case. That’s all I want. That’s all I’m trying to do. But you may be right. So you tell me.’

The old Negro groaned. He groaned peacefully. One hand came out from beneath the covers and turned them back and he swung his legs toward the edge of the bed and said to the youth in the dressing gown: ‘Hand me my shoes and britches.’

‘Listen to me,’ the runner said. ‘There’s not time. It will be daylight in two hours and I’ve got to get back. Just show me how to make the sign, the signal.’

‘You cant learn it right in that time,’ the old Negro said. ‘And even if you could, I’m going too. Maybe this is what I been hunting for too.’

‘Didn’t you just say the Germans might shoot at us?’ the runner said. ‘Dont you see? That’s it, that’s the risk: if some of the Germans do come out. Then they will shoot at us, both of them, their side and ours too—put a barrage down on all of us. They’ll have to. There wont be anything else for them to do.’

‘So your mind done changed about it,’ the old Negro said.

‘Just show me the sign, the signal,’ the runner said. Again the old Negro groaned, peaceful, almost inattentive, swinging his legs on out of the bed. The innocent and unblemished corporal’s uniform was hanging neatly on a chair, the shoes and the socks were placed neatly beneath it. The youth had picked them up and he now knelt beside the bed, holding one of the socks open for the old Negro’s foot. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ the runner said.

‘Aint we already got enough ahead of us without bringing that up?’ the old Negro said pettishly. ‘And I know what you’re fixing to say next: How am I going to get up there? And I can answer that: I never had no trouble getting here to France; I reckon I can make them other just sixty miles. And I know what you are fixing to say after that one too: I cant wear this French suit up there neither, without no general with me. Only I dont need to answer that one because you done already answered it.’

‘Kill a British soldier this time?’ the runner said.

‘You said he wasn’t dead.’

‘I said maybe he wasn’t.’

‘You said you hoped he wasn’t. Dont never forget that.’

The runner was the last thing which the sentry would ever see. In fact, he was the first thing the sentry saw that morning except for the relief guard who had brought his breakfast and who now sat, his rifle leaning beside him against the dugout’s opposite earthen shelf.