Fable, A - William Faulkner [99]
'Verdun?' the runner said. That was just last year--. It took you until-'
'We was walking and working. Then Pappy begun to hear them-'
'There was too many of them,' the old Negro said. 'Men and boys, marching for months down into one muddy ditch to kill one another. There was too many of them. There wasn't room to lay Tuesday quiet and rest. AH you can kill is man's meat. You cant kill his voice. And if there is enough of the meat, without even room to lay quiet and rest, you can hear it too,'
'Even if it's not saying anything but Why?' the runner said.
'What can trouble you more than having a human man saying to you, Tell me why. Tell me how. Show me the way?'
'And you can show him the way?'
'I can believe,' the old Negro said.
'So because you believed, the French Government sent you to France.'
'It was the lady,' the youth said. 'She paid for it,'
'She believed too,' the old Negro said. 'All of them did. The money didn't count no more now because they all knowed by now that just money had done already failed,'
'All right,' the runner said. 'Anyway, you came to France-' hearing it: a ship; there was a committee of at least one or two at Brest, even if they were just military, staff officers to expedite, not a special train maybe but at least one with precedence over everything not military; the house, palace, sonorous and empty, was already waiting for them in Paris. Even if the banner to go above the ducal gates was not ready yet, thought of yet into the words. But that was not long and the house, the palace, was not empty long either: first the women in black, the old ones and the young ones carrying babies, then the maimed men in trench-stained horizon blue, coming in to sit for a while on the hard temporary benches, not always even to see him, since he was still occupied in trying to trace down his companion, his Mistairy, telling that too: from the Paris war office to the Depar'I'ment of State, to Downing Street to Whitehall and then out to Poperinghe, until the man's whereabouts was ascertained at last: who (that Newmarket horse and its legend were known and remembered in Whitehall too) could have gone out as groom to the commander-in-chief himselfs horse if he had chosen, but enlisted instead into the Londoners until, having barely learned how to wrap his spiral puttees, he found himself in a posting which would have left him marooned for the duration as groom-farrier-hostler in a troop of Guards cavalry had he not taught the sergeant in charge of the draft to shoot dice in the American fashion and so won his escape from him, and for two years now had been a private in a combat battalion of Northumberland Borderers.
'Only when you finally found him, he barely spoke to you,' the runner said.
'He aint ready yet,' the old Negro said. 'We can wait. There's plenty of time yet,'
'We?' the runner said. 'You and God too?'
'Yes. Even if it will be over next year.'
'The war? This war? Did God tell you that?'
'It's all right. Laugh at Him. He can stand that too,'
'What else can I do but laugh?' the runner said. 'Hadn't He rather have that than the tears?'
'He's got room for both of them. They're all the same to Him; He can grieve for both of them,'
'Yes,' the runner said. Too much of it. Too many of them. Too often. There was another one last year, called the Somme; they give ribbons now not for being brave because all men are brave if you just frighten them enough. You must have heard of that one; you must have heard them too,'
'I heard them too,' the old Negro said. lLes Amis ti la France de Tout le Monde' the runner said. 'Just to believe, to hope. That little. So little. Just to sit together in the anguished room and believe and hope. And that's enough? like the doctor when you're ill: you know he cant cure you just by laying his hands on you and you dont expect him to: all you need is someone to say "Believe and hope. Be of good cheer,'
' But suppose it's already too late for a doctor now; all that will serve now is a surgeon, someone already used to blood, up there where the blood