My Little WarLouis Paul BoonDalkey Archive Press |
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Between my garden gate, frozen shut, and the marshaling yard where the dead trains are parked, along the stretch of water where the dead boats are moored with crewmen still leaning out over their railings, past the factories round the back which always stink, war or no war—it’s a mystery how any of the blankets or glucose they make ever comes out smelling okay—all the way to the front door of the hospital: it’s all stiff and dead because it’s the winter of Stalingrad. Outside the door of the hospital, frozen shut, people stand stamping their feet and pressing their hands over their ears, and it’s pointless saying it’s cold, since everyone knows it’s cold—but come on, what else is there for one person to say to another? And among the people waiting are the two blind men: the peak of one of their caps, the one who’s left-handed, is askew, like this, to the left; the peak of the other one’s cap, the one who’s right-handed, is also askew, like this, to the right—as if they’d each put their hats on correctly at first but then just had to give them one more lopsided tug, to get things perfect. The blind man on the right’s overcoat hangs open and is gathered up into a point behind his neck from hanging up on a coatrack too long, since naturally a blind person thinks twice before heading out when it’s the winter of Stalingrad and so leaves his coat on the coatrack. And the blind man on the left who has no overcoat, his jacket hangs open and is also sticking up in a point by his neck, with its last button stuck into its second-to-last buttonhole. And they tell a woman who’s only letting her red nose peep out from behind her black scarf and who listens to them with one ear while the other is cocked towards the door of the hospital, which still hasn’t thawed, about the war and the Volga and the Red October factory. And the woman asks if the war is going to end soon and if any coal is going to arrive and what about milk (and everyone sees—apart from the blind men—that “soon” means: before her little girl is cured, who’s in Ward III with TB of the throat). But the war is going to go on for a long time yet, because of this and because of that. And the blind man on the right, calculating, holds up all five fingers of his right hand, while his left hand is still holding the white stick that makes a long sixth finger pointing at the ground.
Then the front door of the hospital finally thaws out at 2 o’clock on the dot, and from the shuffling of the feet passing him and the warmth coming out of the hallway, the blind man on the left realizes that people are going in, first the woman with the red nose, who leaves the blind men and hurries off to Ward III, then the other people hurrying off to the other wards, the ones for men on one side and the ones for women on the other. Come on says the quiet blind man and tugs at the sleeve of the blind man who’s still summing up and telling stories and perhaps is about to say “just think of everything we’re going to have to go through” to the woman who’s been gone now for ages. They point their sticks forward, hold their heads back, lift up their feet, and go in. As for myself, right behind them, I hear the doorman say, “the last ones in should close the door,” and so one of the blind men turns round and shuts it in my face. So there I am, outside, between the front door of the hospital, again frozen shut, and the stinking factories and the stretch of water and the back gate of my garden, in the winter of Stalingrad.
And then those Jewish kids who were picked up for no reason on their way back from school and shoved into a truck and taken to the station where they were loaded into a cattle train, and where’s the train going?
And someone says those trainloads of Jews are gassed, but I can’t let myself believe that if I’m going to keep my conscience quiet, since if a book was going to be written about the war, who’d have the nerve to describe a train like that?
Maybe imagine a movie, you see the train pulling away, but alongside the tracks, among the cinders and the yellow broom, there’s a schoolbag lying open, with a penholder and eraser that have fallen out.
And speaking of train tracks, they said on the radio that we should be avoiding them, but how can you avoid train tracks in Belgium? Try it, go out and walk left or right down the main road, head into the fields, turn your back to the repair shop, and just count the unmanned railway crossings—ha!
And then there are the people who aren’t afraid of the planes themselves but of the air-raid siren, and since nine times out of ten the all-clear sounds before the planes have actually left, they all go calmly to bed as though it’s the siren that drops the bombs.
And there’s that train all ready to depart, parked next to the blank wall of the station—I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but if you happen to be in the neighborhood, drop by—yes, all ready to go, and suddenly the planes are there and no one can run away, and the whole train and everything in it gets smashed against the wall, so that—Maurice said—they have to be scraped off with spoons.
And then the guy who comes up to you afterward and says, quite indignant: it’s a lie, ONLY ten people died.
And the head of Children’s Welfare who sells the biscuits and milk he gets for the children of the poor at an enormous profit, which is going too far—imagine!—so that even his cronies say: he shouldn’t have done that. And to get rid of him they appoint him editor-in-chief of a German paper in which he writes a series of articles about all these immoral smugglers, under , the title: Whatever happened to Christian charity?
That Children’s Welfare guy is pro-German, but then there’s Horseleg who’s a smuggler too and gets drunk every night with a whole bunch of women (oh, I’ve written this before, unless my memory deceives me, but when a person writes so much it’s impossible to remember everything. And apart from that, some things are worth saying twice, since there are plenty of things that can only be half-said each time) and he’s pro-Belgium, so who are you supposed to sympathize with? In the long run I guess it’s like my wife says: this household’s the only real fatherland you’ve got.
And there are only two kinds of people now, the ones who dig air-raid shelters in the middle of their gardens and the ones who watch and snigger—but then the diggers in turn can be divided into two groups: those who actually take cover in their shelters when the air-raid siren sounds, and those who watch and snigger.
And you hear all sorts of talk about shelters: you can’t beat a shelter, I’ve seen people stuck in a cellar that filled up with shit and I heard about these other people who drowned in their cellar and then there were the ones who suffocated because of a gas leak in a cellar, I wouldn’t WANT to be in a cellar, give me a shelter every time.
And in the silence of the night or of the morning or the afternoon, a woman shouting: CAN YOU HEAR THEM!
And the Germans rob you and then the Black Brigade and then the Belgians and then . . . you’re forced to rob someone yourself—ashamed at heart.
And you should see the kids from the housing project blocks walking along with swollen knees between their skinny legs and asses. And they’ve already got bad nerves, children of twelve and thirteen, they’ve got TB or poor eyesight or stomach cramps that make them writhe with pain. You can hardly go into a house where someone doesn’t wet the bed every night.
And in a home like that, the home of someone who’s been driven by poverty to work in Germany, who says THINGS ARE GOOD IN GERMANY, the women wear silk stockings and there’s chocolate to eat and there’s medical insurance—people like that should have their heads cut off, then you could tell them: take a good look, this is the head of an ass!