Breakfast In The Ruins Part 2

"Yes." The girl shrugged. "They are killing everyone. Anyone."

"That way?" Karl's mother pointed towards the Seine. "That way?"

"Yes. Everywhere. But more that way." She pointed in the general direction of the Boulevard du Montparna.s.se. "Are you a petrol-woman?"

"Certainly not!" Madame Glogauer glared at the girl. "Are you?"

"I wasn't allowed," said the girl regretfully. "There isn't much petrol left."

Karl's mother took him back the way they had come. The fires which had been started earlier were now out. It appeared that they had done little damage. Not enough petrol, thought Karl.

With her sleeve over her mouth, his mother picked her way through the corpses and crossed the ruins of the barricade. The other men and women who were searching for dead friends or relatives ignored them as they went by.

Karl thought there were more dead people than living people in the world now.

They reached the Boulevard St.-Germaine, hurrying towards the Quai d'Orsay. On the far side of the river monstrous sheets of flame sprang from a dozen buildings and smoke boiled into the clear May sky.

"I am so thirsty, mother," murmured Karl. The smoke and the dust filled his mouth. She ignored him.

Here again the barricades were deserted, save for the dead, the victors and the sightseers. Groups of Versaillese stood about, leaning on their rifles, smoking and watching the fires, or chatting to the innocent citizens who were so anxious to establish their hatred of the Communards. Karl saw a group of prisoners, their hands bound with rope, sitting miserably in the road, guarded by the regular soldiers. Whenever a Communard moved, he would receive a harsh blow from a rifle b.u.t.t or would be threatened by the bayonet. The red flag flew nowhere. In the distance came the sound of cannon fire and rifle fire.

"At last!" Madame Glogauer began to move towards the troops. "We shall go home soon, Karl. If they have not burned our house down."

Karl saw an empty wine bottle in the gutter. Perhaps they could fill it with water from the river. He picked it up even as his mother dragged him forward.

"Mother - we could..."

She stopped. "What have you got there? Put the filthy thing down!"

"We could fill it with water."

"We'll drink soon enough. And eat."

She grabbed the bottle from his hand. "If we are to remain respectable, Karl..."

She turned her head at a shout. A group of citizens were pointing at her. Soldiers began to run towards them. Karl heard the word "petroleuse" repeated several times. Ma-dame Glogauer shook her head and threw the bottle down. "It is empty," she said quietly. They could not hear her. The soldiers stopped and raised their rifles She stretched her hands towards them. "It was an empty bottle!" she cried.

Karl tugged at her. "Mother!" He tried to take her hand, but it was still stretched towards the soldiers. "They cannot understand you, mother."

She began to back away and then she ran. He tried to follow, but fell down. She disappeared into a little alley. The soldiers ran past Karl and followed her into the alley. The citizens ran after the soldiers. They were shrieking with hysteria and bloodl.u.s.t. Karl got up and ran behind them. There were some shots and some screams. By the time Karl had entered the little street the soldiers were coming back again, the citizens still standing looking at something on the ground. Karl pushed his way through them. They cuffed him and snarled at him and then they, too, turned away.

"The pigs use women and children to fight their battles," said one man. He glared at Karl. "The sooner Paris is cleansed of such sc.u.m the better."

His mother lay sprawled on her face in the filth of the street. There was a dark, wet patch on her back. Karl went up to her and, as he had suspected, found that the patch was blood. She was still bleeding. He had never seen his mother's blood before. He tried hard to turn her over, but he was too weak. "Mother?" Suddenly her whole body heaved and she drew in a great dry breath. Then she moaned.

The smoke drifted across the sky and evening came and the city burned. Red flames stained the night on every side. Shots boomed. But there were no more voices. Even the people who pa.s.sed and whom Karl begged to help his wounded mother did not speak. One or two laughed harshly. With his help, his mother managed to turn herself over and sat with her back propped against the wall. She breathed with great difficulty and did not seem to know him, staring as fixedly and as determinedly into the middle distance as she had always done. Her hair was loose and it clung to her tight, anxious face. Karl wanted to find her some water, but he did not want to leave her.

At last he got up and blocked the path of a man who came walking towards Boulevard St-Germaine. "Please help my mother, sir," he said.

"Help her? Yes, of course. Then they will shoot me, too. That will be good, eh?" The man threw back his head and laughed heartily as he continued on his way.

"She did nothing wrong!" Karl shouted.

The man stopped just before he turned the corner. "It depends how you look at it, doesn't it, young man?" He gestured into the boulevard. "Here's what you need! Hey, there! Stop! I've got another pa.s.senger for you." Karl heard the sound of something squeaking. The squeaking stopped and the man exchanged a few words with someone else. Then he disappeared. Instinctively Karl backed away with some idea of defending his mother. A filthy old man appeared next. "I've just about got room," he complained. He brushed Karl aside, heaved Madame Glogauer onto his shoulder and turned, staggering back down the street. Karl followed. Was the man going to help his mother? Take her to the hospital?

A cart stood in the street. There were no cart-horses, for they had all been eaten during the Siege as Karl knew. Instead, between the shafts stood several ragged men and women. They began to move forward when they saw the old man appear again, dragging the squeaking cart behind them. Karl saw that there were people of all ages and s.e.xes lying on top of one another in the cart. Most of them were dead, many with gaping wounds and parts of their faces or bodies missing. "Give us a hand here," said the old man and one of the younger men left his place at the front and helped heave Madame Glogauer onto the top of the pile. She groaned.

"Where are you taking her?" asked Karl.

They continued to ignore him. The cart squeaked on through the night. Karl followed it. From time to time he heard his mother moan.

He became very tired and could hardly see, for his eyes kept closing, but he followed the cart by its sound, hearing the sharp clack of clogs and the slap of bare feet on the road, the squeal of the wheels, the occasional cries and moans of the living pa.s.sengers. By midnight they had reached one of the outlying districts of the city and entered a square. There were Versaillese soldiers here, standing about on the remains of a green. In the middle of the green was a dark area. The old man said something to the soldiers and then he and his companions began unloading the cart. Karl tried to see which one of the people was his mother. The ragged men and women carried their burdens to the dark area and dropped them into it. Karl could now see that it was a freshly dug pit. There were already a large number of bodies in it. He peered in, certain that he had heard his mother's voice among the moans of the wounded as, indiscriminately, they were buried with the dead. All around the square shutters were closing and lights were being extinguished. A soldier came up and dragged Karl away from the graveside. "Get back," he said, "or you'll go in with them."

Soon the cart went away. The soldiers sat down by the graveside and lit their pipes, complaining about the smell, which had become almost overpowering, and pa.s.sing a bottle of wine back and forth. "I'll be glad when this is over," said one.

Karl squatted against the wall of the house, trying to distinguish his mother's voice amongst those which groaned or cried out from the pit. He was sure he could hear her pleading to be let out.

By dawn, her voice had stopped and the cart came back with a fresh load. These were dumped into the pit and the soldiers got up reluctantly at the command of their officer, putting down their rifles and picking up shovels. They began to throw earth onto the bodies.

When the grave was covered, Karl got up and began to walk away.

The guards put down their shovels. They seemed more cheerful now and they opened another bottle of wine. One of them saw Karl. "h.e.l.lo, young man. You're up early." He ruffled the boy's hair. "Hoping for some more excitement, eh?" He took a pull on the bottle and then offered it to Karl. "Like a drink? " He laughed. Karl smiled at him.

Karl gasps and he writhes on the bed.

- What are you doing ? he says.

- Don't you like it? You don't have to like it. Not everyone does.

- Oh, G.o.d, says Karl.

The black man gets up. His body gleams in the faint light from the window. He moves gracefully back, out of range of Karl's vision. - Perhaps you had better sleep. There is lots of time.

-No...

- You want to go on? A pause.

-Yes...

What Would You Do? (2) You have been brought to a room by the Secret Police.

They say that you can save the lives of your whole family if you will only a.s.sist them in one way.

You agree to help.

There is a table covered by a cloth. They remove the cloth and reveal a profusion of objects. There is a children's comforter, a Smith and Wesson .45, an umbrella, a big volume of Don Quixote, ill.u.s.trated by Dore, two blankets, a jar of honey, four bottles of drugs, a bicycle pump, some blank envelopes, a carton of Sullivans cigarettes, an enameled pin with the word 1900 on it (blue on gold), a wrist-watch, a j.a.panese fan.

They tell you that all you have to do is choose the correct object and you and your family will be released.

You have never seen any of the objects before. You tell them this. They nod. That is all right. They know. Now choose.

You stare at the objects, trying to divine their significance.

3.

Kaffee Klatsch in Brunswick: 1883: The Lowdown Bismarck was very fond of enlarging on his favorite theory of the male and female European nations. The Germans themselves, the three Scandinavian peoples, the Dutch, the English proper, the Scotch, the Hungarians and the Turks, he declared to be essentially male races. The Russians, the Poles, the Bohemians, and indeed every Slavonic people, and all Celts, he maintained, just as emphatically, to be female races. A female race he ungallantly defined as one given to immense verbosity, to fickleness, and to lack of tenacity. He conceded to these feminine races some of the advantages of their s.e.x, and acknowledged that they had great powers of attraction and charm, when they chose to exert them, and also a fluency of speech denied to the more virile nations. He maintained stoutly that it was quite useless to expect efficiency in any form from one of the female races, and he was full of contempt for the Celt and the Slav. He contended that the most interesting nations were the epicene ones, partaking, that is, of the characteristics of both s.e.xes, and he instanced France and Italy, intensely virile in the North, absolutely female in the South; maintaining that the Northern French had saved their country times out of number from the follies of the "Meridionaux". He attributed the efficiency of the Frenchmen of the North to the fact that they had so large a proportion of Frankish and Norman blood in their veins, the Franks being a Germanic tribe, and the Normans, as their name implied, Northmen of Scandinavian, therefore also of Teutonic, origin. He declared that the fair-haired Piedmontese were the driving power of Italy, and that they owed their initiative to their descent from the Germanic hordes who invaded Italy under Alaric in the fifth century. Bismarck stoutly maintained that efficiency wherever it was found, was due to Teutonic blood; a statement with which I will not quarrel.

As the inventor of "Practical Politics" (Real-Politik), Bismarck had a supreme contempt for fluent talkers and for words, saying that only fools could imagine that facts could be talked away. He cynically added that words were sometimes useful for "papering over structural cracks" when they had to be concealed for a time.

With his intensely overbearing disposition, Bismarck could not brook the smallest contradiction, or any criticism whatever. I have often watched him in the Reichstag - then housed in a very modest building - whilst being attacked, especially by Lieb-knecht the Socialist. He made no effort to conceal his anger, and would stab the blotting-pad before him viciously with a metal paper-cutter, his face purple with rage.

Bismarck himself was a very clear and forcible speaker, with a happy knack of coining felicitous phrases.