Fable, A - William Faulkner [102]
'Good morning, my child,' the general said.
'With permission to address monsieur the director your companion?'
'Certainly, my child,' the general said.
'Thank you, my general,' the runner said, then to the old Negro: 'You missed him again.'
'Yes,' the old Negro said. 'He aint quite ready yet. And dont forget what I told you last year. Send for me,'
'And dont you forget what I told you last year too,' the run-ner said, and took that pace backward then halted again. 'But good luck to you, anyway; he doesn't need it,' he said and clapped his heels again and saluted and said again to the staff-major or perhaps to no one at all in the ringing and empty voice: 'Sir!'
And that was all, he thought; he would never see either of them again-that grave and noble face, the grave and fantastic child. But he was wrong. It was not three days until he stood in the ditch beside the dark road and watched the lorries moving up toward the lines laden with what the old St. Omer watchman told him were blank anti-aircraft shells, and not four when he waked, groaning and choking on his own blood until he could turn his head and spit (his lip was cut and he was going to lose two teeth-spitting again, he had already lost them-and now he even remembered the rifle-butt in his face), hearing already (that was what had waked, roused him) the terror of that silence.
He knew at once where he was: where he always was, asleep or on duty either: lying (someone had even spread his blanket over him) on the dirt ledge hacked out of the wall of the tiny cave which was the anteroom to the battalion dugout. And he was alone: no armed guard sitting across from him as he realised now he had expected, nor was he even manacled: nothing save himself lying apparently free on his familiar ledge in that silence which was not only above ground but down here too: no telephonist at the switchboard opposite, none of the sounds-voices, movement, the coming and going of orderlies and company commanders and N. C. O,'s-all the orderly disorder of a battalion p. c. functioning normally in a cramped space dug forty feet down into the earth-which should have been coming from the dugout itself-only the soundless roar of the massed weight of shored and poised dirt with which all subterrcne animals-badgers and miners and moles-are deafened until they no longer hear it. His watch (curiously it was not broken) said:, whether Ack Emma or Pip Emma he could not tell down here, except that it could not be, it must not be Pip Emma; he could not, he must not have been here going on twenty hours; the seven which Ack Emma would signify would already be too many. So he knew at least where they would be, the whole p. c. of them-colonel, ad)utant, sergeant-major and the telephonist with Ins temporarily spliced and extended line-topside too, crouching behind the parapet, staring through periscopes across that ruined and silent emptiness at the opposite line, where their opposite German numbers would be crouching also behind a parapet, gazing too through periscopes across that vernal desolation, that silence, expectant too, alerted and amazed.
But he did not move yet. It was not that it might already be too late; he had already refused to believe that and so dismissed it. It was because the armed man might be in the dugout itself, guarding the only exit there. He even thought of making a sound, a groan, something to draw the man in; he even thought of what he would say to him: Dont you see? We dont know -what they are up to, and only I seem to have any fears or alarms. If I am wrong, we will all die sooner or later anyway. If I am right and you shoot me here, we will all surely die. Or better still: Shoot me. I shall be the one man out of this whole four years who died calmly and peacefully and reposed in dry clothing instead of panting, gasping, befouled with mud to the waist or drenched completely in the sweat of exertion and anguish. But he didn't do it. He didn't need to. The dugout was empty also. The armed