Fable, A - William Faulkner [45]
At five o'clock the major was delivered almost onto the office stoop by the general commanding the brigade's Harry Tate. Just before sunset two lorries drove onto the aerodrome; watching from his hut he saw infantry with rifles and tin hats get down and parade for a moment on the dusty grass behind the office and then disperse in squads and at sunset the patrol of flight commanders and deputies which had gone out at noon in the similitude of B Flight had not returned, three times longer than any patrol ever stayed out or than any S. E. could stay up on its petrol. And he dined with a mess (the major was not present though a few of the older men-including the infantry officer-were; he didn't know where they had been nor when returned) half of whom he knew knew nothing either and the other half he didn't know how much they knew or cared-a meal which was not long before the adjutant got up and stopped just long enough to say, not speaking to Monday the older people at all: 'You aren't confined to quarters. Just put it that almost any place you can think of is out of bounds,'
'Even the village?' someone said.
'Even Villeneuve Blanche, sink of iniquity though it be not. You might all go home with Levine and curl up with his book. That's where he should be.' Then he stopped again. 'That means the hangars too.'
'Why should we go to the hangars this time of night?' one said.
'I dont know,' the adjutant said. 'Dont. ' Then the others dispersed but not he, he was still sitting there after the orderlies had cleared the mess for the night and still there when the motor car came up, not stopping at the mess but going on around to the office and through the thin partition he heard people enter the office and then the voices: the major and Bridesman and the other two flight commanders and no S. E. had landed on this aerodrome after dark even if he hadn't heard the car. Nor could he have heard what the voices were saying even if he had tried, just sitting there when the voices stopped short and a second later the door opened and the adjutant paused an instant then came on, pulling the door after him, saying: 'Get along to your hut,'
'Right,' he said, rising. But the adjutant came on into the mess, shutting the door behind him; his voice was really kind now.
'Why dont you let it alone?'
'I am,' he said. 'I don't know how to do anything else because I dont know how it can be over if it's not over nor how it can be not over if it's over-'
'Go to your hut,' the adjutant said. He went out into the darkness, the silence, walking on in the direction of the huts as long as anyone from the mess might still see him, then giving himself another twenty steps for good measure before he turned away to-ward the hangars, thinking how his trouble was probably very simple, really: he had never heard silence before; he had been thirteen, almost fourteen, when the guns began, but perhaps even at fourteen you still could not bear silence: you denied it at once and immediately began to try to do something about it as children of six or ten do: as a last resort, when even noise failed, fleeing into closets, cupboards, corners under beds or pianos, lacking any other closeness and darkness in which to escape it; walking around the corner of the hangar as the