Bombs fall. Wounded arrive. Boys still alive. Boys with a chance. I have to go. Two soldiers I do not know pull a cloak over his face. Carry him away like one might move old inventory to make room for the new. She grabs my arm. Says let's go. I watch them leave. I watch him, go. I watch some part of me, go. Boys with a chance are coming. Where was his chance? Where? Where in God's name was his? There are no bells. I see no vision. Receive no succor. You see, boys with a chance are arriving. We have to go. We have to turn around. We got to go she says. We got to go.They turn a corner, round a muddy tent. Snow falls. I want to throw myself over a cliff. Curse every cross all the way down. Overhead. Baritone P-47s throttle. Like thunder in a dream. Her arm pulls me up. Back into the hell. We start walking away, in the muck, the slush, the blood. Did you know him she breathes. Yeah. Kane, I say, Virgil. He was Virgil Caine.
__________
random commentary:
bombs fall (like some never ending nightmarish fireworks show it sounds--a low rumble, something boiling and bubbling just over the horizon--I feel nauseous even using such quaint and feeble and misleading terms as fireworks and rumble and boiling and bubbling--to use the words I'd like would turn reader from the page, make sticking a finger down your throat seem like fun)
boys arrive (in various bits and pieces, sans an arm, a leg, half a face, stages of unnatural undress, mud and blood, the smell of urine and feces wet and caked as the mud, faces contorted, skin stretched over bone, a grotesque masquerade of life imitating death; what we see and smell and hear cannot, will not be found in a book or newspaper or movie--so there is the unreality of our experience--something that defies understanding without direct contact and we live, we return as ghosts, our tongues silent, as dead as the youth slaughtered)
boys with a chance (not dead yet, although what has died is known but not seen; many hoping to join their other half in a place anywhere but here)
I have to go (I don't want to go. I want to die. Join Virgil. Escape this place, this above ground hell and I dream of opening my arms, to a bomb falling, just for me, bright light and from this place I am free)
two soldiers (who are these boys; what right do they have to carry him away, to take him from me, to act as if this is just another routine task, one of many, moving bodies like moving furniture, some part of them shut off and I wonder if they, if I, will ever be able to turn it back on; or is it gone too, like Virgil, gone without ceremony, without notice)
cloak over his face (I have nothing to add. some things are beyond words. a horror felt but not talked about. who would I talk to? who would know? and at the end of the day, what really is there to be said. but that image stays as if everything else was a moving picture and this a photograph)
5 comments:
This post picks up from the end of the second paragraph of 1944 (I'll wait).
She never forgave herself for that one word: was.
Of course. Virgil. This too is inexplicable, wonderfully mysterious, magic, and then again really just you, your brilliance, show the essence and then show the name, and say what you will, whether it simply molds itself in the presentation or could have been no other, as so it seems upon receipt, the one thought that accompanied the names of DT has been yes. Virgil, the name is not just a name, but the man, this man, Mary's Virgil, Jessie's Virgil.
The writing is so effective, each repetition constricting the heart, synchronizing emotion close as can be whilst being another, knowing nothing, listening only, of the moment so brief, so inconsiderate so to speak. Just one, one more, but her's. How intently you have drawn, wordlessly shown for the most part, how she stood, how she continued, the magnitude and the hollowness of her being as she must have stood over dozens of others that day, worked and toiled and felt their blood, heard their calls, watched them go. Or stay. Robbed, as they were all robbed, of their rightful time. In the post below, you wrote of her staying among them in all weathers, to remain as they had had to remain, I hadn't thought of this, unwritten though it was, of her having to do the same, of her having to remain regardless, to move on regardless, to continue regardless of whom was left behind. This is so stirring, I as reader have only just begun to give myself fully to it.
I re-read the first part first, only and I am so in awe of how you have written it. How you knew to do this. How innate your talent, how insightful, in tune, in, you are. Incredible, the feeling that you have, the knowledge. With these short sentences and repetitions, we hear, hear her must, hear her lack of choice, hear her desperation, her pain shrouded in duty, in what cannot be changed, in the call of those still living. The pain and heartbreak and torture that people are able to survive is unimaginable, but go on, they do, we see it every single day, amazing strength, amazing will, the choice made to live, to continue. And they would say the only choice, that there was no choice. I'm babbling, I know, but it is in the listening, in hearing her turn, in watching her walk, though there is a hand on her arm, she is the one walking, the one reminding herself, words heard and thought echoing within her mind. Battling, yet she walks, boys with a chance, where was his chance, I want to throw myself over a cliff, Back into the hell, she speaks, she answers, she knows, was. Left not just of action, of life lost, but of word, of time, of tense. There are no bells. I see no vision. So brilliant. This part sounds so loudly, creates such pause. It cuts straight to the heart, thoughts for Mary, thoughts for Virgil, so intent in its conveyance, in its attempt to allow for even the smallest measure of understanding at what it meant to her, what it did to her to have to let him leave, to leave him in return, it rouses the deepest memories of grief, of that one moment where the pain of what one had to become accomstomed to still seemed to offer a choice, the ability to deny, to make it untrue, to not let it sink in, to keep the truth at bay for just a moment, and the memory of nothing being changed except this one thing, so to speak, time not even hiccuping, the world outside on its axis spinning still. Breathing one still is. That person over there knowing nothing of what was and what now is no more. You can be thankful that I have limited time this morning for if so allowed, I would not leave this box, and I would continue this way indefinitely, locked within, watching her, knowing that as much as I can imagine, it doesn't even come close to knowing, and this, essentially, is your writing, your talent. You write the wave and we are washed away upon it. I'll be back after birthday cake. Be warned. Somewhere in the hundreds of words, will be the one thing I want to say, eventually.
You write the wave and we are washed away upon it.
I think I want this on my headstone. Sigh. Your comments are stories within themselves. You give flesh where I leave bone. Juice where I have left fruit. A docent to explain the shield and sword left behind. So I give you one of these from my collection. Tube left me with an abundance: WOW!
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