Futurist Stories Part 5

SHE was s.h.i.+elding a girl whose eyes resembled Igor's. The girl who had watched to escape.

AND could not

THE uniform, the sabre--

GONE was the memory of a brown habit.

HE came nearer. Was it a woman--

HE clasped her. Her soft hair brushed his face.

OTHER soldiers came--dragged her from him. Fought over her like powerful beasts, heeding not the mother--

IGOR--protect her

IN a drunken rage he caught the girl to the open window--

I'LL kill her he screamed. You--who seem to know my name.

THE crime was spared him.

HER lifeless body slipped from his arms.

IGOR, gasped the mother, You have killed--

I'LL kill you!--the wine had infuriated--he lifted his sabre--

STOP--you are my son

DAZED--he heard the words but understood not.

A NIGHT of drunkenness, of horror, had pa.s.sed in the Belgian chateau.

THE captors had damaged--broken--destroyed.

THE sun was setting on a second day--when Igor awoke.

THE first time in his life he awakened from drink. He reached out expecting to find the rough wall of the monastery

HE felt a dead body--the sharp edge of a sabre--

WHERE--

ORDERS had come

THE army

HAD there been battles--

--AND slowly memory returned--

STOP--you are my son.

WHO had said it--was it long ago--No. Only after the wine cellar--

HE sat up--on the floor--where drunkenness had overcome him.

THE horrible memory of his crime swept over him.

HIS mother--

HE seized the body and gazed at the staring eyes. Then this was the remorse the older monks had told him--had been his father's--

AND he--her son--had plunged his sabre into her heart

HIS own was bursting.

AND this girl. He had not killed her--she had died--

WAS she--his sister--only of a different father--

WE are through--burn

A HARD line played on the lips of the commander

THE flames leapt from room to room--

IGOR--

THE smoke--it was overcoming him--

HIS mother--

HE had forgotten how to pray

AN unutterable abyss.

THE horror of war

THE fire blazed upward--smoke filled the room--

THERE'S the bell--he staggered to his feet--It is ringing