carefully before him, bottomup. We could hear the water dripping from it between his footsteps. He became one of the blob of thicker shadow where the bandage gleamed and where Monaghan cursed steadily and quietly. “And each after his own tradition,” the subadar said. “My people. The English gave them rifles. They looked at them and came to me: ‘This spear is too short and too heavy: how can a man slay a swift enemy with a spear of this size and weight?’ They gave them tunics with buttons to be kept buttoned; I have passed a whole trench of them squatting, motionless, buried to the ears in blankets, straw, empty sand bags, their faces gray with cold; I have lifted the blankets away from patient torsos clad only in a shirt.
“The English officers would say to them, ‘Go there and do thus’; they would not stir. Then one day at full noon the whole battalion, catching movement beyond a crater, sprang from the trench, carrying me and an officer with it. We carried the trench without firing a shot; what was left of us the officer, I, and seventeen others lived three days in a traverse of the enemy’s front line; it required a whole brigade to extricate us. ‘Why didn’t you shoot?’ the officer said. ‘You let them pick you off like driven pheasant.’ They did not look at him. Like children they stood, murmurous, alert, without shame. I said to the headman, ‘Were the rifles loaded, O Das?’ Like children they stood, diffident, without shame. ‘O Son of many kings,’ Das said. ‘Speak the truth of thy knowing to the sahib,’ I said. ‘They were not loaded, sahib,’Das said.”
Again the band came, remote, thudding in the thick air.
They were giving the German drink from a bottle. Monaghan said: “Now. Feel better now?”
“It iss mine head,” the German said. They spoke quietly, like they were discussing wall-paper.
Monaghan cursed again. “I’m going back. By God, I…”
“No, no,” the German said. “I will not permit. You haf already obligated.”
We stood in the shadow beneath the wall and drank. We had one bottle left. Comyn crashed it, empty, against the wall.
“Now what?” Bland said.
“Girls,” Comyn said. “Would ye watch Comyn of the Irish nation among the yellow hair of them like a dog among the wheat?”
We stood there, hearing the far band, the far shouting.
“You sure you feel all right?” Monaghan said.
“Thanks,” the German said. “I feel goot.”
“Come on, then,” Comyn said.
“You going to take him with you?” Bland said.
“Yes,” Monaghan said. “What of it?”
“Why not take him on to the A. P. M.? He’s sick.”
“Do you want me to bash your bloody face in?” Monaghan said.
“All right,” Bland said.
“Come on,” Comyn said. “What fool would rather fight than fush? All men are brothers, and all their wives are sisters. So come along, yez midnight fusileers.”
“Look here,” Bland said to the German, “do you want to go with them?” With his bandaged head, he and the subadar alone were visible, like two injured men among five spirits.
“Hold him up a minute,” Monaghan told Comyn. Monaghan approached Bland. He cursed Bland. “I like fighting,” he said, in that same monotone. “I even like being whipped.”
“Wait,” the German said. “Again I will not permit.” Monaghan halted, he and Bland not a foot apart. “I haf wife and son in Beyreuth,” the German said. He was speaking to me, He gave me the address, twice, carefully.
“I’ll write to her,” I said. “What shall I tell her?”
“Tell her it iss nothing. You will know.”
“Yes. I’ll tell her you are all right.”
“Tell her this life iss nothing.”
Comyn and Monaghan took his arms again, one on either side. They turned and went on, almost carrying him. Comyn looked back once. “Peace be with you,” he said.
“And with you, peace,” the subadar said. They went on.
We watched them come into silhouette in the mouth of an alley where a light was. There was an arch there, and the faint cold pale light on the arch and on the walls so that it was like a gate and they entering the gate, holding the German up between them.
“What will they do with him?” Bland said. “Prop him in the corner and turn the light off? Or do French brothels have he-beds too?”
“Who the hell’s business is that?” I said.
The sound of the band came, thudding; it was cold. Each time my flesh jerked with alcohol and cold I believed that I could hear it rasp on the bones.
“Since seven years now I have been in this climate,” the subadar said. “But still I do not like the cold.” His voice was deep, quiet, like he might be six feet tall. It was like when they made him they said among themselves, “We’ll give him something to carry his message around with.”
“Why? Who’ll listen to his message?”
“He will. So we’ll give him something to hear it with.”
“Why don’t you go back to India then?” Bland said.
“Ah,” the subadar said. “I am like him; I too will not be baron.”
“So you clear out and let foreigners who will treat the people like oxen or rabbits come in and take it.”
“By removing myself I undid in one day what it took two thousand years to do. Is not that something?”
We shook with the cold. Now the cold was the band, the shouting, murmuring with cold hands to the skeleton, not the ears.
“Well,” Bland said, “I suppose the English government is doing more to free your people than you could.”
The subadar touched Bland on the chest, lightly. “You are wise, my friend. Let England be glad that all Englishmen are not so wise.”
“So you will be an exile for the rest of your days, eh?”
The subadar jerked his short, thick arm toward the empty arch where Comyn and the German and Monaghan had disappeared. “Did you not hear what he said? This life is nothing.”
“You can think so,” Bland said. “But, by God, I’d hate to think that what I saved out of the last three years is nothing.”
“You saved a dead man,” the subadar said serenely. “You will see.”
“I saved my destiny,” Bland said. “You nor nobody else knows what that will be.”
“What is your destiny except to be dead? It is unfortunate that your generation had to be the one. It is unfortunate that for the better part of your days you will walk the earth a spirit. But that was your destiny.” From far away came the shouting, on that sustained note, feminine and childlike all at once, and then the band again, brassy, thudding, like the voices, forlornly gay, hysteric, but most of all forlorn. The arch in the cold glow of the light yawned empty, profound, silent, like the gate to another city, another world. Suddenly Sartoris left us. He walked steadily to the wall and leaned against it on his propped arms, vomiting.
“Hell,” Bland said. “I want a drink.” He turned to me.
“Where’s your bottle?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone where? You had two.”
“I haven’t got one now, though. Drink water.”
“Water?” he said. “Who the hell drinks water?”
Then the hot hard ball came into my stomach again, pleasant, unbearable, real; again that instant when you say Now. Now I can dump everything. “You will, you goddamn son,” I said.
Bland was not looking at me. “Twice,” he said in a quiet, detached tone. “Twice in an hour. How’s that for high?”
He turned and went toward the fountain. Sartoris came back, walking steadily erect. The band blent with the cold along the bones.
“What time is it?” I said.
