Breakfast In The Ruins Part 22

They went back to the village and found Lieutenant Snider talking to Captain Heffer. They were laughing, too. Captain Heffer's pants were covered in mud to the thigh. He had evidently been in one of the paddies.

The guns.h.i.+ps and communications choppers were still thundering away overhead. Every two or three minutes you heard gunfire from somewhere. Karl couldn't see any more gooks. For a moment he had an impulse to shoot Lieutenant Snider and Captain Heffer. If they had turned and seen him, he might have done so. But Leinster tapped him on the shoulder, as if he guessed what he was thinking, and jerked his thumb to indicate they should try the outlying hootches. Karl went with him part of the way, but he had begun to feel tired. He was hoping the battle would be over soon. He saw an unshattered c.o.ke bottle lying on the ground. He reached out to pick it up before it occurred to him that it might be b.o.o.by-trapped. He looked at it for a long tune, struggling with his desire for a drink and his caution.

He trudged along the alley between the ruined huts, the sprawled and shattered corpses. Why hadn't the VC appeared? It was their fault. He had been geared to fight, he sound of gunfire went on and on and on.

Karl found that he had left the village. He thought he had better try to rejoin his squad. They ought to retain military discipline. It was the only way to make sense of this. He tried to go back, but he couldn't. He dropped his rifle. He leant down to pick it up. On either side of him the rice paddies gleamed in the sun. He reached out for the rifle, but his boot caught it by accident and it fell into a ditch. He climbed into the ditch to get the rifle. He found it. I was covered in slime. He knew it would take him an age to clean it. He realized that he had begun to cry. He sat in the ditch and he shook with weeping.

A little later Grossman found him.

Grossman kneeled at the side of the ditch and patted Karl's shoulder. "What's the matter, boy?"

Karl couldn't answer.

"Come on, son," said Grossman kindly. He picked Karl's slimy rifle out of the ditch and slung it over his own shoulder. "There ain't much left to do here." He helped Karl to his feet. Karl drew a deep, shuddering breath.

"Don't worry, kid," said Grossman. "Please ..."

He seemed to be begging Karl, as if Karl were reminding him of something he didn't want to remember.

"Now, you stop all that, you hear? It ain't manly." He spoke gruffly and kept patting Karl's shoulder, but there was an edge to his voice, too.

"Sorry," said Karl at last as they moved back to the village.

"n.o.body's blaming you," said the sergeant. "n.o.body's blaming n.o.body. It's what happens, that's all."

"I'm sorry," said Karl again.

- But we have got to blame somebody sooner or later, says Karl. - We need victims. Somebody's got to suffer. "Now, lieutenant, will you kindly tell the Court just what you had to do with the Human Condition? We are waiting, lieutenant? Why are we not as happy as we might be, lieutenant? Give your answer briefly and dearly."

- What the h.e.l.l are you talking about? says his friend, waking up and yawning.

-I didn't say anything, says Karl. - You must have been dreaming. Do you feel better?

- I'm not sure.

- You don't look it.

What Would You Do? (17) You have been traveling in the desert.

There has been an accident. Your car has overturned and the friend with whom you were traveling has been badly hurt. He is almost certain to die.

Would you remain with him and hope that rescue would come soon?

Would you leave him what water you have, making him as comfortable as possible and setting off to find help, knowing he will probably he dead by the time you return?

Would you decide that, since he was as good as dead, you might as well take the water and food with you, as it will give you a better chance?

Would you remain in the shade of the wreck, knowing that this would be the wisest thing to do, but deciding not to waste your water on your dying friend?

18.

London Life: 1990: City of Shadows One of the happiest answers recorded of living statesmen was that in which a well known minister recommended to an alarmed interrogator "the study of large maps". The danger which seems so imminent, so ominous, when we read about it in a newspaper article or in the report of a speech, grows rea.s.suringly distant when considered through the medium of a good sized chart.

HER MAJESTY'S ARMY : INDIAN AND COLONIAL FORCES. A Descriptive Account, by Walter Richards, J. S. Virtue & Co., 1890.

If SNCC had said Negro Power or Colored Power, white folks would've continued sleeping easy every night. But BLACK POWER! Black! That word. BLACK! And the visions came of alligator-infested swamps arched by primordial trees with moss dripping from the limbs and out of the depths of the swamp, the mire oozing from his skin, came the black monster and fathers told their daughters to be in by nine instead of nine-thirty. The visions came of big BLACK bucks running through the streets, raping everything white that wore a dress, burning, stealing, killing. BLACK POWER! My G.o.d, the n.i.g.g.e.rs were gon' start paying white folks back. They hadn't forgotten 14-year-old Emmett Till being thrown into the Tallahatchie River. (We know what you and that chick threw off the Tallahatchie bridge, Billy Joe) with a gin mill tied around his ninety-pound body. They hadn't forgotten the trees bent low with the weight of black bodies on a lynching rope. They hadn't forgotten the black women walking down country roads who were shoved into cars, raped, and then pushed out, the threat of death ringing in their ears, the pain of hateful s.e.x in their pelvis. The n.i.g.g.e.rs hadn't forgotten and they wanted power. BLACK POWER!

LOOK OUT, WHITEY! BLACK POWER'S GON' GET YOUR MAMA by Julius Lester, Allison & Busby, 1970 - It's dawn, says Karl. -At last! I'm starving!

- You're beautiful, says his friend. I want you for always.

-Well...

- Always.

- Let's have some breakfast. What's the time? Do they serve it yet?

- They serve it whenever you want it, whatever you want.

- That's service.

-Karl?

-What?

- Please stay with me.

-I think I'll just have something simple. Boiled eggs and toast. Christ, can you hear my stomach rumbling?

Karl is fifty-one. Lonely. All as far as he can see the ruins stretch away, some black, some grey, some red, outlined against a cold sky. The world is over.

Karl's friend seizes him by the wrist. The grip hurts Karl, he tries to break free. Karl blinks. The pain swims through him, confusing him.

An old fifty-one. A scrawny fifty-one. And what has he survived for? What right has he had to survive when others have not? There is no justice...

-Karl, you promised me, last night.

- I don't remember much of last night. It was a bit confused, last night, wasn't it?

- Karl! I'm warning you.

Karl smiles, taking an interest in his fine, black body. He turns one of his arms this way and that as the dawn suns.h.i.+ne glints on the rich, s.h.i.+ny skin. - That's nice, he says.

- After all I've done for you, says his friend, almost weeping.

- There's no justice, says Karl. - Or maybe there is a very little. Maybe you have to work hard to manufacture tiny quant.i.ties of justice, the way you get gold by panning for it. Eh?

- There's only desire! His friend hisses through savage, stained teeth. His eyes are bloodshot. - Karl! Karl! Karl!

- You're looking even worse in the daylight, says Karl. - You could do with some breakfast as much as me. Let's order it now. We can talk while we eat.

KARL WILL BE FIFTY-ONE. His mother will have been dead long-since, of cancer. His father will have been dead for eight years, killed in the Wolverhampton riots of 1982. Karl will be unemployed.

He will sit by the shattered window of his front room on the ground floor of the house in Ladbroke Grove, London. He will look out into the festering street. There will be n.o.body there but the rats and the cats. There will be only a handful of other human beings left in London, most of them in Southwark, by the River.

But the wars will be over. It will be peaceful.

Peaceful for Karl, at any rate. Karl will have been a cannibal for two of the years he has been home, having helped in the Destruction of Hong Kong and served as a mercenary in Paris, where he will have gained the taste for human flesh. Anything will be preferable to the rats and the cats. Not that, by this time, he will be hunting his meat himself; he will have lost any wish to kill the few creatures like him who will haunt the diseased ruins of the city.

Karl will brood by the window. He will have secured all other doors and windows against attack, though there will have been no attack up to that time. He will have left the wide window open, since it will command the best view of Ladbroke Grove.

He will have been burning books in the big fireplace to keep himself warm. He will not, any longer, be reading books. They will all depress him too much. He will not, as far as it will be possible, think any more. He will wish to become only a part of whatever it will be that he is part of.

From the corners of his eyes he will see fleeting shadows which he will think are people, perhaps even old friends who will have come, seeking him out. But they will only be shadows. Or perhaps rats. Or cats. But probably only shadows. He will come to think of these shadows in quite an affectionate way. He will see them as the ghosts of his unborn children. He will see them as the women he never loved, the men he never knew.