The Hour of the Donkey

They followed him down the narrow passage, Wimpy hopping painfully, supporting himself with one hand on the wall, until they reached a door.

The room beyond was a slaughter-house at first glance. At second glance ... it must have been a wash-room or a laundry-room of some sort once, with large stone sinks beneath antique brass taps . . . but at second glance it was still a dummy4

slaughter-house, with its huge table stained with blood—

there was blood everywhere—and the floor was thick with blood-stained bandages and dressings.

'Aye,' said the Tynesider, nodding at Wimpy, 'yew'll nah this place reet enough, Doctor. They patched oop some ov thor aan, but it were mostly wor lot, more's the pity. The buggers cut us to bits, theer fukken tanks did, cut us to fukken ribbons. Mind, they did thor best for wor lads, aa'll say that for thum — trayted us the same as theer aan.' He pointed to the outside door. 'But the garden's full uv them they could dee nowt wi' them that was ower far gone, sar.'

'Where are the German medical people?' asked Wimpy.

'Buggered off and left iz this moirnin', sar, wi' the fukken tanks. Left iz in charge, wi' one uv theers an' ine, an' one uv wor aan from the Durhams—tha' wi' the poor wounded in the front rooms noo, waitin' ter be moved oot.'

The front door banged in the distance.

'Quick, man!' exclaimed Wimpy. 'They're coming!'

'Get oonder the tebble, sar!' Hadwin pointed under the huge operating table. 'Twa stretchers—yew lay yorsels doon on them, an' aah'll cover yew wi' blankets, an' the tebble wi' a shayet. Then if they see yew they'll think yor joost twa more deed 'uns, like them poor buggers oot there, mebbe.'

'Harry—' Wimpy began. But by then Bastable was already half-way on to his stretcher under the table.

'That's reet, sar—that's reet!' The Tynesider arranged a dummy4

blanket over him. 'Noo—leave yer byuts sticken' oot the end thar, an' cover yer face—there, that's champion! Noo, divunt mek a noise, an' aah'll coom back for yew when aah can.

Mayntime, aah'll gan oot th' back way—'

For a moment, there was silence, but then Bastable heard the beating of his heart, his tell-tale heart, which he must still somehow.

This was the second time that he had been dead, and with his boots showing too— passing for dead among the dead once again, except that this time he knew what he was doing and was not at all sure he could act the part with the conviction it required if the Germans looked under the table.

The blanket against his face wasn't soft, it was strangely stiff, almost like cardboard.

At first he had hardly understood a word the Tynesider had said, it had almost been a foreign language. But then, quite suddenly, he had understood every word, every fukken word.

In the silence he could still hear the distant pop-pop-pop of machine-guns, and the heavier poop— it was not a rumble, but merely a gradation up from the pop-pop-pop— the poop of heavier guns.

And now the crunch of footsteps in the passage, much closer.

It seemed that all he had left was his sense of hearing—

The blanket against his face was stiff with blood, of course.

But he could no longer feel that, it was the knowledge inside his head, mixed with equally sickening fear.

dummy4

The door cracked open.

German voices. Once again Bastable experienced the humiliation of hearing only guttural sounds, without the least understanding of what they meant. Wimpy would be lying there beside him, making sense of those sounds, while all he could do was to lie like a block of wood, like a dead man, like a donkey—like a dead donkey—and understand nothing.

He forced himself to listen to the harsh voices. It was incredible that this was the same language as in the German lieder— those meaningless, but heart-wrenchingly beautiful songs Mother loved to play—the language of Goethe and Bach and Beethoven, about whom he knew next to nothing except that they were great men like Shakespeare and Milton and Newton, and that it would be in their language that the orders for his death might come in the next moment.

He knew that he was trying to keep sane, and to stop screaming with terror in protest that he hadn't been born and brought up with love and gentle kindness, and trained and educated, to lie under a blood-stiffened blanket in a French laundry on a summer's afternoon with the fear of death sweating out of him through every pore—this wasn't Harry Bastable at all—it was a stranger, because this couldn't happen to Harry Bastable—

Bastable!

One of the Germans had said his name—

dummy4

Bast-abell- schwisser-glutzig-aben-geruber-begegen-schlikt-wollen-nachtvice- Bastabell-gabble-gabble-gabble-abuzsleine-gabble-gabble-gabble-gabble- Willis—

Willis!

There was more than one voice, in fact there were three voices: there was the subaltern's voice, which was now deferential, almost scared, with only the shreds of obstinacy left in it—the voice of a junior officer— who knew his orders, but also knew that he was overmatched; then there was a bullying voice, before which the subaltern's voice retreated; and finally there was a third voice, softer than the bullying one, yet somehow more frightening, because it seemed to require no loud threats to make its points—it was this voice which finally reduced the subaltern to heel-clicking obedience.