Splendor from Darkness

Preface to Splendor From Darkness

by Karl Orend

Aeschylus wrote that in war truth is always the first casualty. This was something ingrained into me subconsciously—from a childhood framed by the aftereffects of World War Two. Without this conflict I would never have been born. Without the upheaval it foisted upon my family I would never have become the man I am—even though I was not born until eighteen years after the cessation of hostilities.

My great-grandfather came from a remote Transylvanian village, deep in the Carpathian Mountains, but he left with his wife and brother, for Ohio, to begin a new life at the end of the nineteenth century. My grandfather reversed the process, returning to Transylvania from the United States and marrying there as a teenager. But then he found himself forced to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Hussars when World War One erupted. Soon, he was fighting for the country of his origins against the country of his birth. After the war, Transylvania was wrenched from Hungary and given to the young state of Romania. What was my grandfather now? Was he American, Hungarian, Austrian, Romanian or Volksdeutsche? Suddenly fact and truth begin to blur.

The complexity of truth visited upon my grandfather became greater with my father. Born in Romania, but classed as of German origin, he was doing military service when World War Two arrived. Romania sided with the Axis. His origins were Germanic (rather than German) and he was seen as Volksdeutsche—and eventually transferred to German command, where he fought out the rest of the war on the Russian front. Romania conveniently changed sides when it saw the Axis was losing, and those troops unlucky enough to have been with German forces when the switch occurred were declared criminals, stripped of citizenship and their possessions, forbidden to return home. Suddenly, my father was stateless. When his regiment surrendered to the Americans at the close of hostilities he would have had American citizenship if only he had known to apply for it, but instead he was given German nationality, even though he had barely seen Germany. He came to England as a prisoner of war and two years later married my mother, who was a Polish Jew. Even though he was later offered citizenship and a military rank by two countries against whom he had fought, no one could agree what my nationality my father was. English was his sixth language —learned only when he was past thirty. He spoke it with the soft Transylvanian Saxon accent. It sounded more Dutch than German.

Throughout my childhood the effects of the war raged on. Kids at school tormented me and called me Fritz, because according to them I was a German and my Dad had been a Nazi. They never stopped to think why a Nazi would be married to a Jew and speak better Yiddish than she. They had no idea of the complexity of events that had brought him here or that he could have at that time been carrying an American, British or French passport, if only he had chosen the path of violence, instead of peace.

The above account is sufficient to show that truth and fact are very different things. Facts often do not even resemble truths. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the World War Two environment in which William Davey’s Splendor from Darkness is set. Before the story moves to Southern France in advance of Operation Dragoon, the gripping action unravels in Algeria based upon real facts occurring during the invasion by Allied Forces—American, British, and Free French during Operation Torch (1942-43). Both Morocco and Algeria had been under the control of Vichy France, thus allied to Germany. The British had convinced the Americans to abandon Operation Sledgehammer (a direct attack upon occupied Europe) and to, instead, first gain control of the Mediterranean and North Africa, so that a multifaceted attack could be mounted and Axis resources drawn away from the Eastern Front and Northern Europe.

The international unit of commando soldiers in Splendor from Darkness come from many nationalities and backgrounds—American, Canadian, Polish, French, Italian, British, German, Jewish, Jicarilla Apache, and Algerian. All are thrown together because of the war. The soldiers range from peacetime lawyers who know little about actual combat to hardened criminals, who are allowed to fight rather than continue serving time. This last situation sets up one of the many questions raised by Davey’s book. Due to lack of manpower resulting from high mortality rates in front-line units, criminals sentenced to life imprisonment for killing are paroled in order to kill once again. If they murder this time successfully enough, possibly they will be awarded medals, perhaps even gain permanent freedom. Wherein lies the truth and justice?

The reasons for such characters being involved in the Algerian and French conflicts are vastly different—even though they supposedly fight in common cause. The truth about any war, but especially World War Two, is simplified in the extreme by historical records and public perceptions. Few writers dare tackle the complexity. To the public, most of the truth is obscured by the needs of wartime and post-war propaganda. The victors always rewrite history. The helpful and useful enemies are silently incorporated into the mainstream and contribute to their former allies’ future, as long as a few scapegoats can be found.

William Davey’s novel operates on several levels. The narrative seems to concentrate on concerns of personal truth — what individuals will, or should do under pressure, and which direction, if any, their moral compass will take. Although this is part of the book, there is, as an unspoken presence, the greater historical situation and questions of profound import that arise when we realize that what we call history is often not truthful, but rather the emotive and biased record of what we need to believe happened, disregarding the inconvenient truths suppressed in order to fit what we wish to be recorded by posterity.

Splendor from Darkness opens with some of the most powerful writing on life in combat that you will ever read. The hero of the novel is New York cab driver Michael Santini, part Italian and part French —a private pressed into sergeant’s responsibilities. His brother at home is a Catholic priest, but Santini has lost his faith along the way, en route to the hell of battle. Wounded after an act of heroism, he is transported to a rear-echelon hospital, where he meets an army nurse who, through an act of subterfuge, following what she perceives as an insult that humiliates her, and fearful he knows a secret that could incriminate her, plots to have him murdered. Hoping her accomplice will be the legal system, she falsely accuses him of a crime that carries the death sentence in a military court martial during time of war—rape.

To anyone who knows the truth of World War Two, the very notion that rape carries a death sentence for a soldier is cause for an ironic reflection. In war, rape is a staple. The horror felt by the Allies in Davey’s book is subconscious and naive because the alleged crime is committed against a fellow member of the Allied Armed Forces and not a woman from the enemy side. In actuality, as Soviet troops raged into Germany, as the war drew to a close, some ten million women were raped—as many as two million children were born of these attacks. Only one person I can recall has ever admitted witnessing such an action—Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Prussian Nights. The Red Army memorial raised to the heroic Soviet soldier in Berlin is still known locally as the tomb of the unknown rapist.

William Davey has a profoundly satirical purpose in Splendor from Darkness that would be easy to miss for those with a limited grasp of history. Repeated incidents throughout the book observe the unrealistic confrontation of a legal observer threatening to punish or charge subordinates for actions which, seen in the context of total war would be ridiculous. In his sense of logic it is worth losing soldiers to the guardhouse for shooting at wild dogs, getting drunk on duty, or disrespect but while his actions are legitimate they are also short-sighted with regard to the overall war effort. There is also a minor underlying note of racism between allies—how erstwhile friends are not necessarily people we respect. At one point in his trial, Santini could be shown to be telling the truth by some French Foreign Legionnaires. His military council will not call them as witnesses because of the prejudice he knows the tribunal bears against the cowardly French. Santini’s life hangs in the balance, in part because of the acts of governments that the soldiers in question may have totally disapproved of, but which they were forced to go along with or face trial themselves for desertion or cowardice. France during World War Two was schizophrenic and pragmatic at best.

William Davey is superb at showing us how the small details, some slight change, a nuance or a memory can provoke people to act out something that would never be expected of them. He is also aware that for most of us the past is not dead. It is not even past. Traumas inflicted in childhood or Proustian memories of humiliations suffered, emotions and love withheld, can resurface to wreak terrible havoc on both our own lives and, if we cannot master them, on the lives of people who trigger in us the catalyst necessary to provoke our pain to manifest itself as retribution. Some of Davey’s lines are unforgettable, such as this one regarding a soldier’s little sister: The unloved child of a whore, cradling the inevitable doll of insanity. This tells us as much as some whole books about the effects of the absence of love, or the inability to love, on a defenseless infant. It hints at the terrible price that may be paid by anyone who comes, as an adult, into contact with that child when they reach adulthood, if they are unable to reconcile themselves to the tragedy that was their lot.

But poverty can compromise almost anyone and the most pertinent question before the court-martial is perhaps that if it had not been for the childhood of the plaintiff would the case against Santini ever arisen at all? She carries the anger, resentment and hate that had been passed down from her father and what is revealed is that circumstances and background are only part of life. No matter where or how we grow up, it is the inner strength to overcome adversity which defines us. The fact that the plaintiff could evolve through time, mature during her later experiences with the French Resistance forces, learn to contain her willfulness, and finally respect the man she impulsively misjudged, makes her a psychologically fascinating person.

Santini himself is a heroic character, sensible and calm. He has courage and compassion, yet lives in the real world. He will save a life, keep true to his beliefs and do his duty as a soldier. But he can also display many of the imperfections that beset each and every one of us at times, in a persistence to pursue honor and justice. Attuned to nature, Santini has compassion for the horror being inflicted on the natural world by the machines of war. He is well aware of the Jains, who will not walk outside at night for fear of accidentally crushing a bug, and thus taking the life of a living soul. He wonders if he was wounded because he unintentionally did just that and if he is part of some divine plan for retribution and enlightenment.

Nature is a character in this book as much as any of the men and women who walk its pages. The landscape, the stars and creatures are as important to these characters as the sea is to sailors. Davey’s powers of description are exceptional. One of the finest images is of the giant eucalyptus trees whose boughs seem to form a cathedral nave, from which the healing scents envelope the battle hardened soldiers and their misery. Another is during a surgical operation when a spectacular peacock moth is killed unnecessarily, one whose beauty alone could act as an antidote to the inhumanity of the times. Birds alone can fly away from the battlefield but many choose to remain. From owls to storks, vultures to nightjars, swallows to hawk eagles and woodpeckers, each offers a symbolic vision of man’s folly.

Splendor from Darkness is a deeply allusive novel. Many of its references will pass the average reader by. They are allusions to, among others: Proust, Tolstoy, Hemingway (all novelists want to be war correspondents), Italo Svevo, Carl Sandburg, Robert Browning, Saint Augustine, Omar Khayyam and even Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard de la nuit. However, Davey wears his learning lightly. His is a practical and wise application of literature. Others are not drawn in just for effect, but to reveal something profound about the nature of lived experience, the everyday applications of philosophy and the way ordinary lives find echoes in seemingly remote literature. The talismans the soldiers carry are usually fragments torn from nature—a rabbit’s foot or a piece of wenge wood—as if it is our connection to nature that offers us protection from the inhumanity of man.

The novel deals with many of the most pressing concerns of mankind. It portrays the sometimes-momentous effects of illness, poverty and human emotion—not only in the lives of those who experience them, but also potentially in others. One man who could testify for Santini in the court-martial will not for his superior officer threatens him with demotion if he tells the truth. The loss of salary would prevent him from sending money to his wife, who is crippled. What should he prioritize—the truth, his rank, his wife, his conscience, or the life of another man?

In a world in which death is ever present, like that of war, it is not surprising that Davey makes occasional use of ghost characters, rather as Tolstoy did in War and Peace. In one instance, two enemy commanders facing each other on the battlefield may be provoked to show no mercy, take no prisoners, by the ghosts of those they have loved or fought with and lost.

William Davey has always been a writer drawn to philosophy within the overall story of civilization. A prominent role is given in Splendor from Darkness to ideas perhaps influenced by Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty. Sometimes, what seems like blind chance can determine everything in our lives — serendipitously or tragically. Also present are echoes of Nietzsche, Unamuno, Plato, other philosophers, as well as the works of Chaucer, Boccaccio, Aretino, Shakespeare and Rabelais. Never wishing to be categorized with any particular way of being, Davey wraps his thoughts around classic philosophical questions and insists upon the relativity of truth irrespective of current trends.

Another of the major themes in Splendor from Darkness is the difficulty human beings have with both truth and justice. At one point, we hear: I thought the law was supposed to bring out the truth. Where’d you get that idea? is the harsh, but realistic, reply. The most dangerous kind of liar, Davey knows, is the one who mixes falsehood with truth. The ability some people have to play on the bias of society and the false persona they present to the world for gain, while telling outrageous lies, is something many people have experienced. During a war, as in contemporary society, the court system struggles to be objective, but even Santini realizes that it is futile to testify on his own behalf because he would be telling a truth the court will not want to hear.

Solzhenitsyn clearly knew: hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century. In such an environment, he also knew that: It is not that the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes…we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions. Violence, whether physical or emotional, …can only be concealed by a lie and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man (or woman) who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take violence as his principle. The dividing line between good and evil is not abstract. It cuts through the heart of every human being.

Saint Augustine’s theories on lying are alluded to at length in this book. One haunting phrase of Davey’s should remain with readers and prompt them to question accepted truths about their own lives and history, about everything that they hold to be so:

The truth is a lie that has yet to be discovered.

He makes us question the very foundations of our beliefs and what we hold to be true of humanity. History is replete with evidence than man is both irrational and cruel, disregarding of truth, susceptible to hysteria and mob rule. One character recalls that the Chinese used to put even corpses on trial. The Great Cat Massacre, in Paris, or Salem Witch Trials are not aberrations. They are evidence of the great delusion that can be caused by the collective imagination.

William Davey subtly presents all kinds of questions. As an important writer he does not seek to impose his own solutions upon the reader, but, like a neutral ray of sunlight, instead echoes the social calm of Marcus Aurelius. Throughout the novel opposing views are presented. The characters are not avatars of the author. Santini is a reflective agnostic. He allows his own conscience to decide—as should we all.

What Davey does show us is that to try to impose rules upon something as obscene and barbaric as war is futile and hypocritical. We may convince ourselves that a war is won according to rules, that one side is good and one evil, but there is very little truth in that. What is truth at one point in history will probably be a lie the next. The widow of L-F Céline, Lucette Destouches, once wrote: When one has one’s nose in the middle of history, one sees nothing. Everything is reconfigured. It is the truth according to the victors that is always told. Churchill said: In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.

Splendor from Darkness begins at night. The night is often a time charged with anxiety. The balance of power shifts away from us and we may become weak and vulnerable. Yet, there are times when the night can offer solace and when, gazing at the stars, we may find ourselves contemplating infinity or the still beauty of the universe. It is also a time for both conscious and unconscious reflection, the dream world of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, David Gascoyne’s Night Thoughts or Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. What did William Davey intend by his title? As an astronomer, Davey had a profound knowledge of night and darkness and the stars that watch over us. He knew that Hesiod, in Theogeny, had posited that night might have preceded day. There are many reasons to believe that he intended not only the spiritual darkness that has descended upon our modern world, but also the darkness in the individual hearts and souls of man. He doubtless knew Richard Wright’s quote that:

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws us all. He raised the question that Victor Hugo implied when he wrote: The guilty one is not he who committed the sin, but he who caused the darkness.

Carl Jung said: As far as I can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.

Splendor from Darkness is both magnificence and light. Light can come into and from this darkness of our world. Kafka knew that: Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off…though not reluctant…if you summon it by the right world, by its right name, it will come. Horace said that it was courage that could raise our life to crimson splendor. For Emerson, it was character.

Perhaps Robert Browning said it best when he wrote: Truth lies within us. It takes no rise from outward things, whatever you believe. There is an innermost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness and to know it consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape rather than in effecting entry for the light supposed to be without.

Splendor from Darkness shows us that the darkest place in the universe potentially lies within the heart of man. The argument could be seen as existentialist. But Davey’s predilection is for another world, where the old gods live on — the world of the ancients and of the East, where the potential for Godhead lies within each of us, a splendor that must rise from this darkness. That is why Splendor from Darkness is also interwoven with humor as well as an unexpected story of love and admiration.

William Davey was born in 1913, the son of renowned painter Randall Davey, and grew up in the artistically charged atmosphere of early Santa Fé, surrounded by visits from Witter Binner, Marsden Hartley, and John Sloan. Educated at Princeton, Berkeley and the Sorbonne, he published his first book of poetry Arms, Angels, Epitaphs, and Bones in 1935 and his first novel Dawn Breaks the Heart in 1941. This novel was a Bildungsroman—the story of sensitive Philip Bentham, from childhood to tempestuous marriage. The title derives from Rimbaud. Davey’s literary agent was Madeleine Boyd, who also represented Henry Miller and Thomas Wolfe. Famed editor and friend John Hall Wheelock encouraged his writing and wanted him to continue with Scribner’s but after Wheelock retired, he went with a smaller publishing company that still had a Senior Editor rather than an editorial board.

William Davey is one of the most profound and moving of modern novelists. His work deserves the widest possible audience. A courageous writer, who has for decades written against the trends of our time, he returns us to the most fundamental questions of what it means to be human. He asks the most vital questions and renders us the responsibility for self-examination and reflection. He suggests that our salvation lies not in Messiahs and gurus, but firmly in our own hands.

Splendor from Darkness stands as a beacon of light in a dark and cruel age, in which we have lost track of that which is most likely to bring us happiness and peace. Only by healing the schizophrenic nature inherent in modern civilization will we illuminate the path out of this darkness. The only light we have, often flickering and buried far from sight, lies in the deepest recesses of our soul, and love has a way of conquering it all.

Karl Orend

Editor, Alyscamps Press, Paris

Austin, Texas

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PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

There was a feeling of night coming, and over the front and over the cities in the rear the smell of dust hung heavy in the air. The storks, made restless by the stillness of twilight, rose from the rooftops and soared through the dust clouds with their long legs trailing behind them. There were plane trees along the avenues with bark like camouflage canvas, and the graveyards were bordered by cypress which went very well with the dead. At the front the silence competed with the sound of artillery and the still air rippled with the beating of wings. Flocks of doves on their way to water were flying over the guns and they looked out of place in the middle of a war and somehow strangely immortal. From the high ground west of the wadi the mountains stretched to the east, and the horizon was blacker than the sky and speckled by small shell bursts. Wild olive trees led to the German positions, and along the ravines the shadows had tarnished the foliage where in daylight you could see a silver light on the leaves. There were pines too, and the wind which blew after sunset rumbled faintly with gunfire but failed to stir the tufts of the needles. Shadows fell on the aerial ambulance that had been shot down in flames and its patients lay in the wreckage still wrapped in charred bandages. Under the constellations brightening in twilight the winter air was seared by shells passing high overhead and later the sky line held by a German parachute division flashed with their falling and then the explosions were taken up by chains of echoes and finally the wind blowing down from the mountain brought with it a fine powder of dust that smelled different in the darkness.

The North African night was charged with anxiety. The German silence was becoming alarming, and it seemed to throb in the darkness almost like a sound. Santini found himself waiting for the metallic rip of machine guns and then the tracers that always looked as though they were coming straight at you. Near him a telephone in a leather case rested on top of his parka and a line of combat wire went from the wadi over a mountain and back to the mortar.

He started sending a low but insistent whisper through the transmitter. Corrigan? Listen! I need that mortar in operation. What’s the matter back there?

A boyish voice tinged with embarrassment answered him. I knew something would happen. It’s the longitudinal level. The bubble slipped from the center.

So center it! And why did it slip in the first place?

Above him a spaced salvo whistled through the thin moonlight, and when the sound faded he heard the scratchy faintness of Corrigan saying, Montoya leaned on the tube.

"He what?"

I told you. He leaned on the tube.

Santini was silent. Near him a soft but heavy object was being dragged through sand. This oddly sinister sound was interrupted by querulous cracklings over the telephone.

Santini...? Santini...? What should I—

Do? I’ll tell you what you should do. Either shoot yourself or realign the base plate.

Angrily, he released the switch and set the receiver down on his parka. Somewhere something was burning; then the smell of smoke drifted over his foxhole and into his nostrils and he tried not to blow his nose. At last the wind veered and under a crescent moon cirrus clouds began sailing northward. That afternoon a sniper had been firing at the medics, and several dead still lay along the wadi where from time to time panting and sounds of dragging came out of the darkness. A family of Berbers was stripping the dead. Some of their dogs started barking and far away they were answered by other animals irritated by the commotion, and their combined sounds began reverberating among the ravines when two mortar shells fell from the darkness in the direction of the nearest dogs. Santini lay listening to the explosions when suddenly his eyelids slammed onto his eyeballs and streaks of yellow zigzagged over his retinas. A vacuum seemed to suck the oxygen out of his lungs, and when at last he inhaled he smelled air still acrid with explosives but freshened somewhat by dust from pulverized stone.

He coughed convulsively, and his shirt flattened by the blast finally fell away from his chest. Then he briefly touched a piece of wood he carried in his mountain trousers before he seized the telephone. Corrigan? Stop firing! You sent over a short.

Again silence crackled over the telephone.

Sorry, Corrigan mumbled.

A scream rang out near Santini. The wind blew its echoes away, and once more the silence was filled with crisp sounds of dry leaves drifting over the sands.

But Corrigan was shocked at having heard a scream over the telephone. "My God! What was you?"

No, it’s the Berbers, Santini whispered. Now listen, Corrigan. Send Warniak down here. I want to come back and check that mortar myself.

Friendly machine guns began firing and the darkness was cut across by arcs of American tracers. To the left somebody was riding his gun, and Santini could hear the crack of the firing and the thump of the report and then the rapid furry blending of the echoes. Suddenly the machine guns stopped, and from a plain south of the mountain he heard the flat crack of an antitank gun. The explosion surprised him and brought something new into the night. What the devil’s that? he asked himself. Antitank guns were not supposed to fire at targets of opportunity. Then what were they firing at? There were no enemy tanks within miles. Division Intelligence had said so. He blew out a contemptuous breath and reminded himself that in the army Intelligence was a synonym for stupidity.

But someone’s shape lurching in starlight now loomed in the distance and Santini heard dislodged rocks rolling down the hillside towards the wadi. It was Warniak. He was letting field wire trail through his hand in order to lead him right to the telephone, and he cursed when he had to bend down because the wire was stuck under rocks. The more he stumbled the greater his anger grew and the hatred he had always felt for Santini increased with each step. He was so furious that silence felt better than speech, and he crawled into the foxhole without saying a word.

Santini gave him a long stare. You’re drunk! he exclaimed in a tone of disgust.

"Who? Warniak shouted. Who you mean? Me?" The smell of stale ferment came from Warniak’s mouth.

Great. There’s nothing like the precision of a front-line soldier who’s drunk.

Not drunk, Warniak contradicted. Not tat tall.

Lower your voice. Where did you get it?

Warniak was silent. He felt part of his mind as if separate from himself deciding to placate Santini, and this drove the anger deeper and forced him to lie. Hart gave it to me, he said without thinking. Then he realized that the reply was unfortunate because Hart didn’t drink.

Clouds began drifting over the wadi, and shells went whispering through them and burst on a dark mountain in explosions no brighter than fireflies. Across the wadi shells from the forward battalions had started falling, and more and more rapidly the crunching of high explosive rang among the ravines. The crescent moon was straining dim light through clouds the color of skim milk, and there was still no reply from the Germans.

Hold this position, Warniak, Santini commanded. But if someone comes through, give the password.

Sure, Warniak smirked. Give a password. If someone comes through.

And try to act sober. A green regiment will be crossing the last phase line soon. Untried troops always get into trouble.

Warniak belched in the darkness, and glared at Santini. "Who gives a damn about ’em? What’s the idea tellin’ me to stay? Why don’ you stay?"

There was a dangerous flatness in Santini’s voice. Listen, Warniak. I’m getting tired of you.

Warniak found himself sobering for an instant. He pushed the safety forward on his M1 and the click seemed far too faint. Still, he had a feeling of satisfaction that the sound conveyed his intention. Listen, you basturd— he began, intending to frighten Santini by telling him what had happened the night of the landing when he had followed Lieutenant Klein up the cliff. However, something stopped him, and instead he heard his own voice warning, M1s go off.

Is that so? And with your finger on the trigger?

Yeah. With my trigger on the finger, Warniak said, and instantly wondered whether he had gotten the statement right.

Is that a threat? Santini asked lightly. Are you threatening me?

Wha’ do you think?

I think it’s a threat. I could turn you in. You know that, don’t you?

Oh, my goodyness, Warniak sneered.

I won’t, though. Santini’s voice lowered and his tone changed. I’d rather cut your guts out. Don’t you feel it yet?

Feel what?

My knife under your parka. It could cut your bloody bladder out.

I don’ feel it, Warniak told him.

"You want to feel it?"

No, Warniak said.

Then stop threatening me. I don’t like being threatened.

Warniak was silent. He felt flat and let down as though a wave that had carried him on a furious crest had swept past him and left him treading water in the cheerless depth of this darkness. Then his fingers touched the bottle in his pocket and the feeling of the half-full liter returned him a measure of reassurance, and, with a patience which surprised him, he waited while Santini crawled out of the foxhole and started up the mountain in the darkness. When Santini was only a blur, Warniak pointed the M1 at his shape and squeezed the trigger with the safety on to see how it felt. The trigger remained firm and the gun did not go off, but he had a sense of satisfaction.

As he neared the summit, Santini began crawling since there was an outpost on the military crest, and he was continuing to creep forward when the word "Halt!" stopped him like the point of his knife. Again he told himself that all outposts had the same voices: they were low and nervous but managed to convey the threat of instant death. Still, he almost smiled for he recognized this particular one. What had happened to Hart’s Social Register voice? On becoming an outpost he had suddenly lost it.

When Santini gave the password and stood up on the other side of the crest the first thing that caught his eye was the bipod of a BAR resting between two rocks, and the outpost laying behind it, still obsessively feeling the change lever with his thumb and reassuring himself that it was ready for automatic fire. At last the guard leaned away from his weapon and looked up.

Santini? That you? Did you see your psycho friend?

His smell preceded him.

Well, watch out for him. He hates you. A drunken psycho is dangerous.

No! He’s more dangerous sober.

Santini turned away. From the reverse slope the artillery was visible, and he saw the batteries flash with explosions and heard the rumbling sound of reports, and he knew that in daylight the casings would lie round the guns like the sawed sections of pipe organs. For an instant the organ in the Church of the Most Precious Blood came into his mind, and he remembered the body of his brother lying prostrate and the bishop at last anointing his hands with olive oil which had been blessed and become Oil of Catechumens. Then he exhaled a breath of deep distress and silently spoke a wordless sentence. But finally the memory faded, and he was beginning to feel better when suddenly he realized that he was back in the war.

An unknown shape was crouched in the bushes. Who’s there? he challenged. Speak up or I’ll shoot!

It’s just me. Pop, a worried voice replied. Don’t shoot! At least not now. After a while the older soldier appeared on the path, but, in the shadows cast by the bushes overgrowing the trail, only his voice, raucous and rolling the r’s, identified him in the shadowy darkness.

What the hell are you doing here? Santini demanded.

"‘What am I doin’ here?’ I got dysentery! So why don’t you take a guess?"

But I left you in charge of the mortar, Santini accused him. Then the mortar sent over a short and almost killed me. Now I find that you delegated your duties to a child and that the infant is acting as gunner. How long have you let Corrigan play with the fireworks?

Not more than ten minutes. I had a call of nature. What can a guy do about that?

Well, next time don’t return the call, Santini told him, and strode angrily down the rough hill wondering how much longer he could keep this new group of men together. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for the easy expertise of the soldiers that had already sacrificed everything.

Pop hurried after him, still buttoning his trousers. He carried no side arms but his holster was half-filled with toilet paper. This stupid trick of carrying no arms in the lines was one of his homespun affectations. Wait a minute! he called. What the hell’s eatin’ you?

Santini stopped and turned swiftly around.

What’s eating me? Most of the experienced men in the Section are DOA. The rest are acting like idiots. Montoya leaned on the mortar. Corrigan zeroed in on my foxhole. Then the two of them sent over a short. Oh! And Warniak showed up drunk. Outside of that, there’s nothing much eating me.

You mean the son of a bitch had a bottle?

Of course. But I didn’t confiscate it. I’d ’ve had to kill him.

But just think of it. He didn’t share it! What happened to comrades in arms?

Don’t you know yet? Warniak doesn’t have any.

They continued walking, but after a while the trail widened and they saw a soldier standing motionless behind a mortar. He had both his hands jammed in his pockets and he was staring at the mortar as though he expected the weapon to do something.

That you, Corrigan? But you’re all by yourself. Where’s the other donkey?

What other donkey? What do you mean?

Nothing, Santini said. The donkey that had been stolen from an Arab to pack mortar shells was still at Battalion Supply. Earlier, an Arab had been riding along, sitting sideways at a rapid trot, clad in a mattress cover retrieved from a corpse and wearing a pair of GI shoes bumping beneath it, while holding a goad crawling with flies and gouging an open hole in the donkey’s withers. Now, after the donkey had been confiscated, the sore was beginning to heal under a dressing of preserved butter, and the animal was too valuable to risk this far forward on the night of an attack. The mortar shells he had packed up the mountain were stacked under a rocky overhang and Montoya stood near them apart from the others.

Then a blue light started moving aimlessly over the mortar.

Oh, no! Not again, Santini exclaimed, and he seized Corrigan’s flashlight and held it above the collimator. The sight was no longer on the phosphorous aiming stake and the bubble in the longitudinal level had slipped from the center. He turned the elevating crank and under the blue light the bubble came into view and disappeared with slow swiftness. As he aligned the base plate Corrigan pretended to watch. When the mortar was ready once more, Santini stood up. It’s all set. Pop, you do the firing. Corrigan, you feed in the shells. You both got that?

I got that, Corrigan muttered in the tone of a young man used to being misunderstood.

Well, that’s good. This may turn out to be a good night after all. Santini stayed there a second before walking to the rocky overhang where Montoya still stood in the darkness. Listen to me. I want you to carry these shells to Corrigan. Don’t wait next to the mortar. Don’t lean on the mortar. You can do that, can’t you?

Montoya nodded. His long upper lip as well as his dark and mournful face were obscured by the shadow of the rocks. But he seemed more remote than ever, for the truth was that the donkey had made him homesick. The sensation had begun the first time the donkey had come up the trail, loaded with mortar shells in their triple containers. Montoya had had the impression that he was back in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, and he had almost seen the shorn backs of the ewes marked with tarred crosses and the lambs staggering close to the udders. He had almost smelled the dust floating over the sheep and falling into the coarse coats of the burros while the sheep dog worked the edge of the flock with bursts of movement and everything flowed forward except the dust. He had even imagined that he’d heard the baaing of the sheep and the dull bell of the ram and the dog barking with great economy. But, when it turned twilight and the packs in their tarps had been lifted off, the sound which haunted him most was the shattering sad heehawing of the burro. He had heard it that afternoon, echoing up from Battalion Supply, and it had obliterated the war and faint feelings of unnamed dread. It had remained in his mind ever since, and only Santini did not dirty its memory.

But someone was coming up the trail towards them. Santini challenged him instantly.

Who’s there? Halt! Identify yourself.

"Don’t shoot! a fearful voice implored. I’m the Battalion Executive Officer. Don’t shoot! Every other officer said Exec," but Major Grace’s compulsive exactness didn’t allow him the luxury of abbreviations. Conscious, however, of the note of fear in his voice, the major strode up to the mortar in a very military manner. He was carrying the gas mask which had caused him much ridicule throughout the First Special Commando Force, and he spoke as though he were talking into a radiotelephone. This ceaseless precision guarded his personality from the wide confusion of the war.

Santini smiled to himself.

Who’s the Section Leader here? Major Grace demanded, wishing to wipe away the craven quality of his arrival by a professional interrogation.

I am, Sir.

What’s your name, Sergeant?

Private Santini, Sir.

"Private! That’s not according to the Tables of Organization."

No, Sir. But I guess death turned the Tables, Santini replied and waited for the radio-telephone voice to continue. Nevertheless, he didn’t dislike Major Grace, in spite of the fact that the major was the kind of officer who wore a plastic cover on his garrison cap when it was raining and pinned the Good Conduct Medal to his tunic as though it meant something.

Continue firing, Private, the major commanded in a new voice he had suddenly deepened.

Santini turned the light to the firing tables. Sixty degrees. Three charges, he said.

Corrigan held a shell near the flashlight. The yellow color of high explosive was very pale under the blue light and the six propellant increments of sheet powder looked like gray cartilage. He removed three increments and dropped them in his pocket to use later. When lit with a match they burned with crisp intensity.

Fire!

Corrigan started the shell into the tube, his right hand under the fuse as if under the head of a baby. Suddenly he released it and bent his body to the left. From the mortar tube came the muffled explosion of the ignition cartridge. The shell was gone.

Fire for effect, the major continued in a tone of lighthearted authority, for he was very relieved that another battalion was about to attack and he’d come up to the mortar to watch the attack pass through his lines.

Around them the wind was rising, and it cleared a space among the clouds and suddenly the stars began to shine in the clearing. But the mountain seemed farther away than the stars and the explosions upon it looked as unreal as sparks, and the only reality was the hiss of the rounds leaving the mortar tube.

Far off they heard the faint roar of planes and finally the shattering sound of propellers passed high overhead, but the throb of the motors lessened as the planes flew by them towards the artillery. The men turned to watch. Broad searchlights started to scissor the sky, and antiaircraft began exploding and great dissolving designs formed from the trails of their tracers and faded and fell from the darkness. Orange eruptions of light exploded in irregular bomb bursts among the artillery, and at last they felt the jar of the shock waves traveling up the mountain from the plain and after a while they heard the unsynchronized motors of the German bombers above them, returning.

Suddenly a voice broke in over the telephone. You basturd! Santini, I’ll kill you. Jus’ wait an’ see.

"And just who is that?" Major Grace demanded, upset again by another departure from protocol.

One of our convicts, Major.

"Convicts! And for a moment the major seemed lost in thought. I wasn’t aware... we had people like that... he murmured distractedly, astonished to discover one more place where possible violence was lurking. But lack of rectitude again stirred him to action. What’s that man supposed to be doing?" he angrily asked.

Acting as mortar observer.

"Mortar observer! That man sounds drunk. Where is he?"

The far side of the crest. Near the wadi.

Well, we’ll go and see about him.

Major, I wouldn’t advise that. It’s beyond the outpost. It’s really ‘no man’s land’.

Is it? He began to hesitate, then he felt them smiling around him in the darkness. The feeling of fate touched him like a wind blowing over his skin and he knew at last how you got yourself killed. Because of a whisper. Because of a smile on the face of some soldier.

Let’s go, he said.

CHAPTER 2

Major Grace and Santini walked up the trail and paused at the top. They lay down on their stomachs and watched friendly shells flash on the German side of the darkness, and the shells gave the major a sense of security that was undermined by something inside him which always seemed to be waiting for a fatality. His sheltered rear-echelon life had never prepared him for a night like this. Near them shock waves from howitzers jolted the darkness and thundered in echoes as forward batteries joined the distant artillery in saturation fire.

Despite the pale moonlight something golden gleamed on the major’s collar.

Major, if I were you I’d take off my gold leaf, Santini suggested. There’s been a sniper out there. And, with more malice than he’d truly intended, he added, They just love to shoot officers.

Oh... Major Grace murmured, and his fingers trembled as he tried to unpin his gold leaf. At last he shoved it into his pocket with the air of a man who had narrowly avoided extinction.

Below them on the other side of the wadi a minefield blocked the beginning of a mountain where at first there had been no mines. There had been many warnings with skulls and crossbones and the words ACHTUNG! MINEN! but no one had found any mines. The patrol leaders had reported a dummy minefield and then the patrolling had ceased and the Germans had laid a real minefield under cover of darkness. This left the ravines as the one approach to the mountain and now the enemy mortars and howitzers too were zeroed in on the ravines. To the Germans it looked like a night attack in regimental strength, so they waited for the attack to enter the ravines before loosing their massed fire.

Suddenly a dog began barking, and the sound was followed by rifle shots and a yelp.

What’s going on? the major asked sharply.

It’s an M1. So it’s bound to be Warniak. He’s the mortar observer I mentioned.

But he’s firing at a dog. I’ll court-martial that man! Article of War 86. Misbehavior of a sentinel. The specific anger in the major’s voice contrasted with his general anxiety.

Santini changed the subject. Where’s the Company Commander, Major? I can’t get him over the telephone. The other Exec either. Where are they?

Dead. They tried to get up the trail in a jeep. Ran over a Tellermine.

So that was it. That was the way it was always. You got in a jeep for a three-minute trip and the three minutes exploded into eternity. It didn’t matter about the Executive Officer with his Silver Star that Captain Wojcik had earned himself but had written up for another. It didn’t matter about the Executive Officer with his fat ass and small eyes and the intent interest he had in himself. He could go up into the blue air of horizons. What mattered was that Captain Wojcik had had the experience for which everyone was waiting. The army prepared you for that. The waiting in line. Waiting for chow. Waiting for the synchronized watches to tick your life away. Waiting to die. Everybody was on that waiting list but soldiers had a head start.

Still thinking of Captain Wojcik, Santini heard a small sound of faint hollowness between the bursting of the shells. It was the wind whistling in the muzzle of his gun. He remained silent, and Major Grace asked him what was the matter.

It’s Captain Wojcik. He was a good officer.

And what about Lieutenant Miller? He was a good officer too.

Was he? I don’t know about that. But I know he’d agree with you.

Then a shriek rang out, and despite the rising wind its echoes lingered along the hillside. The major almost stopped breathing. He had been transfixed by this sound of wild despair, but at last his lungs rebelled and he sucked his breath in sharply. My God! What’s that?

The Berbers, Major. They’ve got themselves trapped between us and the Germans.

Oh my! Do you think that might be a woman?

Maybe. The first shrieks I heard sounded like men. This one seems different.

I hope it’s not a woman, the major murmured.

Santini tried not to smile. The major’s hope had amused him, and he told himself that this married major who never went out with North African women was at heart a romantic. And again he found himself wanting to make the major feel better.

You know something, Sir? he suggested with his usual irony. It might be a boy.

A boy! the major exclaimed in a tone of relief. You’re right. It might be a boy. But he appeared to be thinking, and after a moment he added, Still, it’s a shame.

Santini shrugged. Major Grace seemed in search of a perfect world and he didn’t suspect that he’d never be able to find it. Nevertheless, the major’s next question surprised him.

Tell me something. Is there anything to this rumor about the Berbers cutting off the penises of the dead?

Graves Registration found some, Sir.

"But that’s disfiguring the dead! the major remarked with the amazement of a man whose profession, till now, had never provided him with such an example. And, from his experience as a trial lawyer, he went on to state that most crimes were committed against the living.

It certainly looks like it, Santini told him, suppressing a smile.

But across the wadi a wheat field had caught fire and a red glow began to light that part of the darkness. There was little smoke because the wind was blowing from the flank, and again Santini reminded himself that flank winds were dangerous. When the wind blew straight from enemy lines, then you could hear a cough or a sneeze or metallic sounds of machine guns loading. He crawled forward but waited for Major Grace. When they were over the crest, they stood up and followed the field wire down the mountain to the telephone. Warniak lay in the foxhole, snoring. Santini kicked him.

Warniak winced and woke up. Hey there, you fuckin’ shits! Who d’ you think—

Listen, Warniak. Did you fire at a dog?

Why? You from the SPCA? You gunta moon over animals like Montoya? The basturd was barkin’ at me. But not no more he ain’t.

Major Grace strode towards him. Soldier, you’re under arrest.

An’ who the fuck ’re you? Some Dutchman? You own the Holland Tunnel, do you?

I’ll tell you who I am. I’m the Battalion Executive Officer! And I’m placing you under arrest.

Is that so? Well, I don’ see no leaves on you, Joe.

Major Grace began fumbling in his mountain trousers, and he was so furious that he looked in the wrong pockets. But, when he finally found his insignia, he seized it so tightly that its indentations sank deeply into the flesh of his fingers as he brandished the gold leaf under Warniak’s nose. "What’s that look like?"

Looks like a leaf, Warniak admitted but turned on Santini. An where d’ you fit in, you stool pigeon? You makin’ Sergeant for rattin’ on me?

This man didn’t rat on you. Give me that rifle. You’re under arrest. Report to Captain Wojcik.

Captain Wojcik is dead, Santini reminded him.

But the major was beyond listening. Report to Captain Wojcik, he repeated. He was so angry that he leaned forward and jerked the M1 from Warniak’s hand.

Instantly Santini detached two grenades from Warniak’s web equipment. I don’t think you’ll be needing these, Stanislouse.

You think of everythin’, don’t you? But is your insurance paid up?

Don’t worry about it, Warniak.

But I do. Suppose somethin’ should happen to yuh.

Like what?

Like somethin’ unfortunate, Warniak said.

Then you wouldn’t live through it, Santini told him, and, contemptuously turning away, he picked up the telephone.

Pop? Listen. I want you to fire four rounds.

He held onto the telephone. The wind began blowing in gusts; but he heard the receiver crackling right through the sound of the wind and then four pale but wide flashes exploded in sequence and shell fragments shrieked through the darkness. After a while the wind brought him the stale stench of explosives that smelled like the dead odor of oxidations inside cleaned garbage pails. And, to make sure these orders were followed, he even told Pop to cease firing, then released the butterfly switch with a new sense of accomplishment and shoved the telephone into the carrying case.

Although the Executive Officer had already told himself that Warniak was guilty under two major charges—Misbehavior before the enemy and drunk on post and sleeping on post—he was more concerned by the minor charge contained in Article of War 63—Disrespect toward a superior officer.

Did you hear me, Soldier? he demanded in a voice which still sounded infuriated. I asked if you heard me.

Yeah, I heard you, Warniak sneered. You’re the rich Dutchman. You own the Holland—

What? What was that? Soldier, that’s disrespect! I’ll court-martial you under Article of War 63. Now you get the hell out of here. Report to Captain Wojcik.

Warniak cursed him and stumbled out of the foxhole and started climbing the mountain. The major was nothing; the major was only a jerk. He was such a jerk he couldn’t remember that Captain Wojcik was dead. A jerk was not behind this; somebody else was. Fury overcame him. Then he spun around in the darkness and faced the unseen foxhole, and, taking the bottle out of his pocket, he drained it. The eau-de-vie tasted like ether; it bit into his gums and waves of warmth surged from his stomach and went through his chest.

But in the wadi below him the shrill notes of a cricket floated into the foxhole with a blitheness that struck both men as more sure of itself than they were.

Will you listen to that lucky thing? Santini said.

Suddenly the shrill throbbing ceased. On the hillside a twig snapped. Disturbed in its nest and flapping its wings with fright, a bird seemed to struggle frantically through some thick foliage. What’s that noise? the major asked tensely. Do you think that it’s Warniak?

They were downwind. There was still time to whisper.

No. He was drunk. He was stumbling. He’d be dislodging some stones.

Then it’s the Berbers.

No. They’re in the wadi. They’re barefoot in the sand of the wadi.

Another twig snapped, and after a moment a branch whipped backward as though clothing had been freed from a thorn bush. Separated by intervals of silence, a little series of pebbles trickled down from the hillside. Above the wadi clouds had uncovered the constellations, scintillating wildly in windy darkness, and in the sudden starlight they saw a shape which had not been there before.

It’s a man, the major whispered. Let’s challenge him.

No. Don’t do it!

Why not? He might be an American.

He isn’t.

I’m going to challenge him, the major declared, prompted by his habitual fear of uncertainty to assume that the shape might be American. He still wanted to argue.

But a hand seized his arm. Wait! Don’t you smell something? The major shook his head. Well, I do. It smells like solvent.

The odor grew stronger. Now Santini could smell it even through resins oozing from shattered boughs of Aleppo pines, even through wisps of smoke rising from fires dying out in the wheat field. It was the unmistakable sharp chemical odor of rifle cleaner. Someone intended to keep his rifle clean, and Santini told himself that a clean rifle was a professional obsession with snipers.

Then, remembering the rifleman’s tendency to overshoot in the darkness, Santini decided to use his knife, and, placing his tommy gun against the stones of the parapet, he crept from the foxhole.

A hand grasped his heel. Wait! I think we should wait.

No! But stay down. Don’t let him get a shot at you. This is the son of a bitch who’s been killing the medics.

And far away, finally, from Major Grace, Santini felt as if he had left a fatal hindrance behind, and despite the presence of the sniper he experienced a sense of relief. For he’d recovered the luxury of following his own intuitions and making the decisions he trusted; and the sensation became so strong that he stopped and lay on his stomach behind a thorn bush merely to gaze without any purpose at the stark beauty of salt crystals and flat patches of alkali glistening palely in the thin Algerian moonlight. Erratically, a bat circled around him and flitted away. Over the mountain cirrus clouds drifted lightly across the clearing where the stars had been shining and suddenly the starlight dimmed.

He felt strangely happy and he had no need to ask why. This sniper in the moonlight had assassinated time! For once thoughts like the death of his mother belonged to the past, and around him the past had disappeared like that clearing in the clouds through which the stars had been shining. The future had no existence, either, and the only thing living, oddly enough, was death looming in the moonlit shadows of the present.

It was wonderful, for the sniper and himself were submerged in nighttime; they were unseen parts of it, no longer subjected to the distractions of daylight. They were living in a condition that was older than sunlight. And, as he sensed night’s extinction around him, a question whose irony had often occurred to him this time returned with a seriousness new to it. Had God said, Let there be night?

Still, he had to take practical action, and, as he began groping about in the darkness trying to find a stone, his hand was stung by some nettles. Then he began the interior monologue which often had helped him through difficult places, and he went on to tell himself that he’d found the one spot on the hillside that was a thistle gardener’s dream. He’d found a whole hillside full of stinging nettles, but he hadn’t found a stone or a sniper. In an entire country filled with stones and Germans he couldn’t find one or the other!

An owl hooted, and suddenly