No Man's Land (38 page)

The men here wrestle beneath Death's shadow; they crawl on the ground like snakes, a convulsive grimace of doleful pleasure on their faces. Everyone is aware of this unliftable shadow as it settles over the trench, expands invisibly into the very air we breathe and thence into our lungs. It is cast by a cloud which hovers motionlessly above us, cutting us off from divine sunlight and hurling down its threats upon us. Death is omnipresent; he touches everything, wraps everything in his acrid essence, bequeathes to everything a special appearance and a symbolic meaning. His taste is uninterruptedly on our lips. We all are his vassals, all of us, living in his kingdom on sufferance. At any moment he may blow his chilling breath into our lairs. Then, the limbs of all these young bodies panting with sexual frenzy will instantaneously stretch out stiff and yellow. The human form will remain frozen in the ultimate posture of ‘attention' which it assumes when Death's trumpet sounds the ultimate roll-call – fingers rigid, jaws hanging loose, eyes glazed. And then, finally, our bodies will be relieved of every lustful desire, for ever and ever.

STRATIS MYRIVILIS

HOW ZAFIRIOU DIED

from
Life in the Tomb

translated by Peter Bien

A
LONG WITH MY RATIONS TODAY
, Dimitratos brought me a piece of news from the company which has kept me in a state of turmoil ever since. From the disconnected fragments he let fly, I realized from the start that he had something to tell me. As soon as he had put down the mess tin, my wine, and the plate of meat (you see, we don't eat too badly here in the rest-camp) he emitted a hypocritical sigh:

‘Ah, my friend, the world is full of surprises.'

‘What surprises, for instance?'

‘Mmm, nothing. It's not the best of subjects for mealtime. Eat first; we'll have the leisure to talk afterwards. Ask the girl to make me a cup of coffee if you don't mind and give me your cigarettes to keep me busy in the meantime.'

He dropped the bomb as soon as I had finished.

‘They found Sergeant Zafiriou!'

‘They caught him?'

‘Heaven help us, no! First and foremost, he didn't have to be caught – he was absolutely stationary. Second, in the state he was in, no one had the nerve to set hands on him.'

‘So he's dead, is he? Get it over with; you're driving me crazy!'

‘As you like. It's a rather… um…
filthy
story. He didn't come to a good end, this “Hellene”. Have you ever considered the worst possible way a man could die? No? Well then, listen. You know we have a common latrine at the regimental encampment – a large ditch with some long, wide planks placed over it from one edge to the other, like bridges. The boys pull down their skivvies and squat there in rows with their left foot on one plank and their right on another. Groaning away, they evacuate their whole gut along with the salted Australian buffalo the French toss us to eat – you'd think we were wild beasts in a circus. When we pitched camp we found a French regiment cursing up hill and down dale as they pulled up stakes and put their kits together for up top – for the trenches. So we inherited some nice things from that regiment: its kitchens, artillery, a lumber dump, quite a few barrels of vegetable fat, a couple of sleeping-dens infected with scabies, and last but not least a colossal ditch like the one I was telling you about. Nearly full… Well we, our bellies flat as tambourines from the rations in the line, no sooner do we pitch camp than we set the dixies bubbling and dive into the chow. So it didn't take us more than a day or two, praise the Lord, before we filled that ditch right up to the top with shit. Then comes an order: we were supposed to get a working-party to remove the planks from the old ditch and throw them over the new one which had been dug alongside it. The same working-party was to stuff the abandoned latrine solid with stones and dirt. Stones! That was fine in theory, but in practice they'd have to be hauled from a considerable distance in wheelbarrows, since Ordnance Stores wouldn't allot a single cart. So the men of the working-party got going. They sprinkled the ditch with dirt only, and the hell with the rest.

‘“Did you stuff it full?” they were asked when they returned.

‘“Yes.”

‘“Really full?”

‘“Solid!”

‘A lousy pack of lies… Well, Zafiriou the “Hellene” gets up one night to take a piss. Maybe he was a little tipsy – who knows? We'd had a ration of cognac distributed to us that evening. Maybe he was just groggy because his sleep had been interrupted. In any case, instead of going to the new latrine, he heads straight for the old one. This looked like firm ground because of the dirt they'd thrown over it. He makes a bee-line for it with that regulation marching-step he used even for going to the jakes, and braaaaf! down he goes, almost to the bottom. He fought down there, he struggled, tried to jump out, but no use. The poor devil just sank deeper and deeper until he suffocated and kicked the bucket. The doctor says he died from asphyxia. Your fine hero gave up the ghost gorged with shit.'

‘What you're doing is cheap and vulgar, Dimitratos.'

‘Take it easy, friend. What doesn't become cheap and vulgar as soon as you tell it the way it really is?'

‘Zafiriou was a genuine hero. He proved it in the trenches. You should show some respect…'

‘A hero by pre-arrangement, just like all the others who make war their profession. And what about me? I'm a hero too, aren't I? I even have the War Cross, now that we're on the subject. But never mind; that's another story… After all, as soon as we fished your genuine hero out of the latrine with a net, Balafaras of course must have sent one of those “lovely letters” to Mytilene – typewritten. You know, the ones the men have learned by heart, offering the parents “congratulations [Is there any reason for congratulations that you know of?] for the glorious death of your son, who, having demonstrated incomparable gallantry worthy of the best Hellenic traditions, was killed on such-and-such a date, bravely fighting for Faith and Fatherland, against the foe.” As soon as you decide to tell the truth, all this becomes cheap and vulgar. Just imagine, for instance, if he'd written: “Zafiriou died gallantly wrestling with allied Franco-hellenic shit. Unfortunately, he was unable to cry ‘Long live the Fatherland' at the moment of his glorious demise, because… er… he happened to have a mouthful”!'

STRATIS MYRIVILIS

ALIMBERIS CONQUERS HIS FEAR OF SHELLS

from
Life in the Tomb

translated by Peter Bien

F
OR THE PAST TWO WEEKS
they've been preparing us for the great undertaking. Our entire division, reinforced by two non-divisional regiments of reservists, is going to charge the enemy in order to capture one of their large fortified garrisons. The organization needed for this colossal slaughter – needed until the very moment we receive the signal for it to begin – is proceeding with a system so scientifically refined, down to its last insignificant detail, that it boggles the mind. Every conquest of the human brain in engineering, the sciences, psychology, even in art, has become an instrument to aid, as much as it can, the complete extermination of the human beings across the way, men who are lying in wait just as we are, wrapped in their mud.

Satanic engines, murderous vapors enclosed in tubes and shells: they poison the air, expunge the vision from one's eyes, raise suppurated pustules on the lungs. Flame which lays waste whatever it finds before it except tanned leather. Flame which re-ignites automatically by itself after it has been dipped in water and drawn out again into the air. Short, plump torpedoes pregnant with terrible explosive matter. A smaller type which we launch in a kind of tiny trench mortar, using compressed air instead of gunpowder and wick. Incendiary bombs which spill thousands of burning grains out of their bellies when they burst, grains which hop about on their own like devils and can therefore kindle a great number of fires. Thermite bombs capable of developing sufficient heat to melt the breech and barrel of a large-bore cannon, fusing them into a doughish lump of undifferentiated metal. (Once we ignited one inside a steel helmet, which melted and turned to ash in a minute, as though made of cardboard.) Complicated pumps whose nozzles sprinkle fire and death. Masks resembling those worn by sponge-divers. Straps, rubber belts, respirators, chemical apparatuses, electronic mechanisms with microphones that overhear secrets and betray them. Magnificent flares which will ignite like multicolored constellations over thousands of innocent men when they are writhing on the ground, their lungs smashed and their living intestines wriggling between blood-stained clots of mud like flayed serpents.

But of all these repulsive inventions, the one which sends the ugliest chill up my spine is the trench knife. This simple, plain knife with its wide blade is used by the ‘liquidators': soldiers who stay behind in a conquered trench in order to ‘mop it up' while the waves of the assault move forward. What this means is that they slaughter all of the enemy who have remained hidden in dark corners or in the abandoned dugouts, whether from fear or cunning – slaughter them coolly and deliberately, by hand, at close range, like lambs. These liquidators or ‘mop-up men' (doesn't their ironic name remind you of municipal street-cleaners or of peaceful bank-clerks?) must put every last one of the laggards to the knife, one by one. If you want to ‘cleanse' a dugout you start by tossing in a couple of hand-grenades, or you spray it with the flame-thrower. If you have a gas bomb on you, so much the better. This is the burning of the hornet's nest. You heave one inside and all who are hiding there dart through the entrance, stumbling from suffocation and inflamed eyes. The liquidators are waiting for them outside. They slaughter them and then proceed to the next dugout.

All this is being instructed by means of lectures, illustrations, realistic mock-ups, and very enlightening theory.

Last night the captain gathered the whole company together in the large anti-bombardment bunker. He told us that he didn't want a single coward to be found among our ranks during the attack. One and one only, he said, was enough to spread panic, causing the failure of an operation and the useless deaths of countless comrades. This we all found very reasonable in every respect. Afterwards, however, he rested his eyes on us and, smiling in a kindly manner, issued a request. If there was anyone among us who knew himself to be ‘faint-hearted,' would he please not hesitate to say so frankly. What mattered was that he declare himself
now
.

This made all of us feel rather strange. The great bunker where we had assembled is a complete gallery burrowed six meters beneath the surface. We gather here whenever the enemy begins an all-out bombardment, because the other dugouts cannot withstand the ‘big boys' for very long whereas this place is an entire fortress. The timbers lining its walls and roof are whole tree-trunks, its ingress a veritable labyrinth; there is a layer of soil five meters thick above it and armor plating inside. Big as it is, however, it holds all two hundred of us only with difficulty. Whenever we remain inside for more than a few hours at a time, the air grows noxious. If the sentries at the door had allowed it, many would have slipped outside during the bombardments to fill their lungs with ‘clean', cool air at the risk of losing their lives…

The atmosphere this time was just the same, gathered as we were once more in the great bunker, the cannons howling across the way. During a long interval we did not talk; we just listened to the bursting shells as they barked in the air. The captain's voice had sounded so calm amid all this uproar in the background that it made one feel almost safe just to be near him. With that ingratiating smile on his rosy lips, he promenaded his gaze upon us and waited to discover whether or not there really was a ‘faint-hearted' man in our company.

We all understood perfectly well, yet no one possessed the courage to open his heart and utter the truth. Looking straight ahead because of our embarrassment yet filled with a certain curiosity, we waited. As soon as the slightest murmur or noise was heard, however, we turned with a mass movement and searched about in order to discover who was ready to confess his ‘faint-heartedness'. The unshaven faces gleamed as white as plaster beneath the illumination of the acetylene lamp, a secret fever burning in their sunken eyes. I felt an inner urge to push my way through the crowd and station myself at the captain's side so that I could face all of my comrades and say to them: ‘Listen, every one of you – does this mean that there isn't a single brave man among us? We're two hundred strong here. The captain is looking for one coward; I'm looking for one man of courage – a man brave enough to confess that he is afraid to die. Nobody? Well then, every last one of us is faint-hearted, we're a lot of cowardly and good-for-nothing liars.'