sha—second lieutenant then—and I just happened to have found out by accident the last night before we left because a girl had stood me up and I thought I knew why. I mean, who it was, who the guy was. And you know how it is: you think of all the things to do to get even, make her sorry; you lying dead right there where she’s got to step over you to pass, and it’s too late now and boy, wont that fix her——’
‘Yes,’ the old general said. ‘I know.’
‘Sir?’ the captain said.
‘I know that too,’ the old general said.
‘Of course you do—remember, anyway,’ the captain said. ‘Nobody’s really that old, I dont care how——’ going that far before he managed to stop himself. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said.
‘Dont be,’ the old general said. ‘Continue. So you buried him.’
‘So that night just by chance or curiosity or maybe it was personal interest, I was reading up on what somebody would have to do to get rid of me afterward and make Uncle Sam’s books balance, and so when Br——’ he paused and glanced rapidly at the corporal, but only for a second, even less than that: barely a falter even: ‘— the first one died, I was elected, to certify personally with the M.O. that the body was a dead body and sign the certificate and drill the firing squad and then give the command to dump him overboard. Though by the time we got to Brest two weeks later, all the rest of them had had plenty of practice at it. So you see where that leaves us. I mean, him; he’s the one in the fix: if I buried him in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in October last year, then Colonel Beale couldn’t have seen him killed at Mons in 1914. And if Colonel Beale saw him killed in 1914, he cant be standing here now waiting for you to shoot him tomor——’ He stopped completely. He said quickly: ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t——’
‘Yes,’ the old general said in his courteous and bland and inflectionless voice. ‘Then Colonel Beale was wrong.’
‘No sir,’ the captain said.
‘Then you wish to retract your statement that this is the man whose death you personally certified and whose body you saw sink into the Atlantic Ocean?’
‘No sir,’ the captain said.
‘So you believe Colonel Beale.’
‘If he says so, sir.’
‘That’s not quite an answer. Do you believe him?’ He watched the captain. The captain looked as steadily back at him. Then the captain said:
‘And that I certified him dead and buried him.’ He said to the corporal, even in a sort of French: ‘So you came back. I’m glad to see you and I hope you had a nice trip,’ and looked back at the old general again, as steadily as he, as courteously and as firm, a good moment this time until the old general said in French:
‘You speak my tongue also.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the captain answered him. ‘No other Frenchman ever called it that.’
‘Do not demean yourself. You speak it well. What is your name?’
‘Middleton, sir.’
‘You have … twenty-five years, perhaps?’
‘Twenty-four, sir.’
‘Twenty-four. Some day you are going to be a very dangerous man, if you are not already so:’ and said to the corporal: ‘Thank you, my child. You may return to your squad,’ and spoke a name over his shoulder without turning his head, though the aide had already come around the table as the corporal about-faced, the aide flanking him back to the door and through it and out, the American captain turning his head back in time to meet for another second yet the quiet and inscrutable eyes, the courteous, bland, almost gentle voice: ‘Because his name is Brzonyi here too.’ He sat back in the chair; again he looked like a masquerading child beneath the illusion of crushing and glittering weight of his blue-and-scarlet and gold and brass and leather, until even the five who were still sitting had the appearance of standing too, surrounding and enclosing him. He said in English: ‘I must leave you presently, for a short time. But Major Blum speaks English. It is not as good as yours of course, nor as good as Captain Middleton’s French, but it should do; one of our allies—Colonel Beale—saw him slain, and the other—Captain Middleton—buried him, so all that remains for us is to witness to his resurrection, and none more competent for that than Major Blum, who was graduated from the Academy into the regiment in 1913 and so was in it before and has been in it ever since the day when this ubiquitous corporal reached it. So the only question is—’ he paused a second; it was as though he had even glanced about at them without even moving: the delicate and fragile body, the delicate face beautiful, serene, and terrifying ‘—who knew him first: Colonel Beale at Mons in August 1914, or Major Blum at Chalons in that same month—before of course Captain Middleton buried him at sea in 1917. But that is merely academic: identity—if there is such—has been established (indeed, it was never disputed): there remains only recapitulation, and Major Blum will do that.’ He stood up; except for the two generals, the others rose quickly too and although he said rapidly: ‘No no, sit down, sit down,’ the three newcomers continued to stand. He turned to the French major. ‘Colonel Beale has his ghostly bowmen in Belgium; at least we can match that with our archangels on the Aisne. Surely you can match that for us—the tremendous aerial shapes patrolling our front, and each time they are thickest, heaviest, densest, most archangelic, our corporal is there too perhaps, pacing with them—the usual night firing going on, just enough to make a sane man keep his head below the trench and be glad he has a trench to keep his head below, yet this corporal is outside the trench, between the parapet and the wire, pacing along as peacefully as a monk in his cloister while the great bright formless shapes pace the dark air beside and above him? or perhaps not even pacing but simply leaning on the wire contemplating that desolation like a farmer his turnip- field? Come, Major.’
‘My imagination wears only a majority, sir,’ the major said. ‘It cannot compete with yours.’
‘Nonsense,’ the old general said. ‘The crime—if any—is already established. If any? established? we did not even need to establish it; he did not even merely accept it in advance: he abrogated it. All that remains now is to find extenuation—pity, if we can persuade him to accept pity. Come, tell them.’
‘There was the girl,’ the major said.
‘Yes,’ the old general said. ‘The wedding and the wine.’
‘No sir,’ the major said. ‘Not quite now. You see, I can—how do you say?—
