A Fable

‘Where did you say your husband’s farm is?’ the sergeant-major said.

‘I told you,’ the woman said.

‘Tell me again,’ the sergeant-major said.

‘Beyond Chalons,’ the woman said.

‘How far beyond Chalons?’ the sergeant-major said. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘How far from Verdun?’

‘It’s near Vienne-la-pucelle,’ the woman said. ‘Beyond St Mihiel,’ she said.

‘St Mihiel,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘In the army zone. Worse. In the battle zone. With Germans on one side of it and Americans on the other. Americans.’

‘Should American soldiers be more terrible than other soldiers?’ the woman said. ‘Because they are fresher at it? Is that it?’

‘No, Sister,’ the other woman said. ‘That’s wrong. It’s because the Americans have been here so young. It will be easy for them.’ The two at the fence paid no attention to her. They looked at one another through the wire. Then the woman said:

‘The war is over.’

‘Ah,’ the sergeant-major said.

The woman made no movement, no gesture. ‘What else can this mean? What else explain it? justify it? No, not even justify it: plead compassion, plead pity, plead despair for it?’ She looked at the sergeant-major, cold, griefless, impersonal. ‘Plead exculpation for it?’

‘Bah,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘Did I ask you? Did anyone?’ He gestured behind him with the wire-cutter. One of the men released the handle of the barrow and came and took it. ‘Cut the bottom strand,’ the sergeant-major said.

‘Cut?’ the man said.

‘It, species of a species!’ the sergeant-major said. The man started to stoop but the sergeant-major had already snatched the wire-cutter back from him and stooped himself; the taut bottom-most strand sprang with a thin almost musical sound, recoiling. ‘Get it out of the barrow,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘Lively.’ They understood now. They lifted the long tarpaulin-wrapped object from the barrow and lowered it to the ground. The woman had moved aside and the three men now waited at the fence, to draw, drag the long object along the ground and through the wire’s vacancy, then up and into the cart. ‘Wait,’ the sergeant-major said. The woman paused. The sergeant-major fumbled inside his coat and produced a folded paper which he passed through the fence to her. She opened it and looked at it for a moment, with no expression whatever.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It must be over, since you receive a diploma now with your execution. What shall I do with it? frame it on the parlor wall?’ The sergeant-major reached through the wire and snatched the paper from between her hands, his other hand fumbling out the worn spectacle case again, then with both hands, still holding the opened paper, he got the spectacle on his nose and glanced at the paper a moment then with a violent gesture crumpled the paper into his side pocket and produced another folded one from inside his coat and extended it through the wire, shaking it violently open before the woman could touch it, saying in a repressed and seething voice: ‘Say you dont need this one then. Look at the signature on it.’ The woman did so. She had never seen it before, the thin delicate faint cryptic indecipherable scrawl which few other people had ever seen either but which anyone in that half of Europe on that day competent to challenge a signature would have recognised at once.

‘So he knows where his son’s half-sister’s husband’s farm is too,’ she said.

‘Pah,’ the sergeant-major said. ‘Further than St Mihiel even. If at any place on the way you should be faced with a pearled and golden gate, that will pass you through it too.—This too,’ he said, his hand coming out of his pocket and through the wire again, opening on the dull bronze of the small emblem and the bright splash of its ribbon, the woman immobile again, not touching it yet, tall, looking down at the sergeant-major’s open palm, until he felt the other woman looking at him and met the tranquil and incipient gaze; whereupon she said:

‘He’s really quite handsome, Sister. He’s not so old either.’

‘Pah!’ the sergeant-major said again. ‘Here!’ he said, thrusting, fumbling the medal into the taller woman’s hand until she had to take it, then snatching his own hand quickly back through the wire. ‘Begone!’ he said. ‘Get on with you! Get out of here!’ breathing a little hard now, irascible, almost raging, who was too old for this, feeling the second woman’s eyes again though he did not meet them yet, flinging his head up to shout at the taller one’s back: ‘There were three of you. Where is the other one—his poule, whatever she is—was?’ Then he had to meet the second woman’s eyes, the face no longer incipient now but boundless with promise, giving him a sweet and tender smile, saying:

‘It’s all right. Dont be afraid. Goodbye.’ Then they were gone, the five of them, the horse and the cart: rapidly; he turned and took the section of rusted wire from the barrow and flung it down beside the severed bottom strand.

‘Tie it back,’ he said.

‘Isn’t the war over?’ one of the men said. The sergeant-major turned almost savagely.