A Fable

‘But not the army,’ he said. ‘How do you expect peace to put an end to an army when even war cant?’

When they passed through the old eastern city gate this time they were all riding, Marthe with the lines at one end of the high seat and the sister opposite with the girl between them. They were quite high, not in the city’s dense and creeping outflux but above it, not a part of it but on it like a boat, the three of them riding out of the city as on a float in a carnival procession, fluxed out of the anguished city on the fading diffusion on the anguish as on a leg-less and wheel-less effigy of a horse and cart as though borne on the massed shoulders in a kind of triumph; borne along so high in fact that they had almost reached the old gate before the owners of the shoulders even appeared or thought to raise their eyes or their attention high enough to remark what they carried and to assume, divine or simply recoil from, what the cart contained.

It was not a recoil, a shrinking, but rather an effacement, a recession: a suddenly widening ring of empty space beginning to enclose the moving cart as water recedes from a float, leaving the float to realise, discover only then that it was not maritime but terrestrial and not supported by a medium but attached to earth by legs and wheels; a recession, as though the shoulders which for a time had borne it were effacing not only the support but the cognizance too of the weight and presence of the burden, the crowd pressing steadily away from the cart and even transmitting on ahead as though by osmosis the warning of its coming, until presently the path was already opening before the cart itself ever reached it, the cart now moving faster than the crowd, the faces in the crowd not even looking toward it until the second sister, Marya, began to call down to them from her end of the high seat, not peremptory, not admonitory: just insistent and serene as if she were speaking to children: ‘Come. You owe him no obligation; you dont need to hate. You haven’t injured him; why should you be afraid?’

‘Marya,’ the other sister said.

‘Nor ashamed either,’ Marya said.

‘Hush, Marya,’ the other sister said. Marya sat back into the seat.

‘All right, Sister,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten them: only to comfort them.’ But she continued to watch them, bright and serene, the cart going on, the cleared space moving steadily before it as if the emptiness itself cleared its own advancing vacancy, so that when they came to the old gate the archway was completely vacant, the crowd now halted and banked on either side of it for the cart to pass; when suddenly a man in the crowd removed his hat, then one or two more, so that when the cart passed beneath the arch it was as though it had quit the city enclosed in a faint visible soundless rustling. ‘You see, Sister?’ Marya said with serene and peaceful triumph: ‘Only to comfort them.’

Now they were out of the city, the long straight roads diverging away, radiating away like spokes from a hub; above them slowly crawled the intermittent small clouds of dust within which, singly, in groups, sometimes in carts also, the city emptied itself; the parents and kin of the revolted regiment who had hurried toward it in amazement and terror, to compound between the old walls vituperation and anguish, now fled it almost as though in something not quite of relief but shame.

They didn’t look back at it though for a while yet it remained, squatting above the flat plain, supreme still, gray and crowned by the ancient Roman citadel and slowly fading until in time it was gone though they still had not looked once back to know it, going on themselves behind the strong slow heavy deliberate unhurryable farm-horse. They had food with them so they didn’t need to stop save for a little while at noon in a wood to feed and water the horse. So they only passed through the villages—the silent arrested faces, that same faint visible soundless rustling as the hats and caps came off, almost as though they had an outrider or courier to presage them, the girl crouching in her shawl between the two older women, Marthe iron-faced, looking straight ahead and only the other sister, Marya, to look about them, serene and tranquil, never astonished, never surprised while the heavy shaggy feet of the horse rang the slow cobbles until that one too was behind.

Just before dark they reached Chalons. They were in an army zone now and approaching what five days ago had been a battle zone though there was peace now or at least quiet; still an army zone anyway because suddenly a French and an American sergeant stood at the horse’s head, stopping him. ‘I have the paper,’ Marthe said, producing and extending it. ‘Here.’