IN THE WAR, THE WALL
“How old were you when the War began?” asked the doctor. He sat with his back to his guest, sunlight illuminating a tired face with a greying mustache. It was a sweltering day, and he had abandoned his slate grey coat on the back of his chair, choosing instead to open the windows and let the occasional breeze in.
The man opposite him had made no such concession; he was dressed in a cream-colored suit and the humidity in the air didn’t seem to bother him as much as his host. His black hair was brushed back neatly; on his lap was a pale felt hat. He tilted his head at the question.
“I? In 1914, I was a boy of eighteen; the terror of my nurses and the despair of my parents.” He smiled briefly. “That was after I met him, of course.”
The doctor smiled at the mention of their mutual friend. They were seated in his chambers in Cornwallis Street, Calcutta on a sultry summer afternoon. Outside, the city moved along sluggishly; the occasional cry of a passing hawker pierced the sleepy silence.
There was a soft knock and the doctor looked up as a woman pushed the door open.
“Jol khaben?” With a glance, she noted his guest and quickly pulled the end of her long sari over her head.
“My sister, Beena,” the doctor said. His guest got to his feet and bowed deeply. “This is Mr. Hayashi, who has come from Japan.”
“Oh!” Beena said, blushing faintly. “Please don’t mind me, I will bring some tea.” Her English was lightly accented.
Before Mr. Hayashi could say a word, she disappeared around the door. The doctor laughed.
“She is shy, don’t mind her.”
“Not at all,” Mr. Hayashi said, sitting down. He put his hat aside and sat straight-backed on the cane chair provided for him. “You are not married?”
“No.” The doctor replied. “Before the war, I might have, but now the desire has quite left me. And Beena is a willful thing, don’t let her behaviour fool you. I have my hands full managing her.”
Mr. Hayashi acknowledged the remark with a smile. He said, “I am sorry to have come to you about this so suddenly, Doctor Bose.”
“I was startled when I got your telegram.” The doctor said. “Even more startled to find that you knew him. I haven’t heard anyone mention Mehroor Khan in years.”
“I knew him for a short while in Japan.” Mr. Hayashi said. “He grew to be a dear friend. I always wondered what became of him and…”
“I am sorry that I was the bearer of such news.”
“No, I had the feeling it could be so.” Mr. Hayashi paused, seemingly lost in thought. “He was a remarkable boy. Man.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, it’s been so long since I’ve seen him that I can barely think of him as the man he must have become.”
“You met him in your childhood?”
“When I was fifteen, yes. His father came to Yokohama on business.” Mr. Hayashi smiled briefly. “He was the first outsider I had seen. I preferred to keep to my books, but my father insisted I eat dinner with them, and that is how we met.” He chuckled. “He was so very quiet in the beginning.”
“Knowing what I know of Khan, I cannot imagine he was ever quiet.”
“Haha, yes. He was shy at first. His father did most of the talking. I was sent to show him around the house—the elders had to discuss business, you see. I showed him the gardens and we spoke a while. It was... difficult, in the beginning. He spoke English fluently and I, not as well. But he was very interested in everything I showed him, from the flowers to the shishi-odoshi. Oh, how he was fascinated with it. I still remember him rushing back to his father afterwards to demand that they get something similar for their home.” Mr. Hayashi shook his head. “What a talking to he got. But they were with us for five days after that and in that time, we grew quite close. He was a great talker and I loved to listen whenever he spoke. I had never met someone like him before. Someone quite so—”
“Charismatic?” The doctor was smiling. Mr. Hayashi tipped his head in assent.
“Yes. And when he left, I was despondent for days. My father promised me he would take me on his next trip to India. But the war dashed those hopes.”
“Among many others.”
“Yes.” Mr. Hayashi paused for a moment before asking, “His funeral was well attended?”
“I am sorry to say I did not go. It… it was a difficult affair.” The doctor drummed his fingers on his desk. “I haven’t been in contact with him for many years.”
“Why is that?”
The doctor hesitated. “Are you a man for strange stories, Hayashi-san?”
♦
Beena showed them to an inner lounge and served them tea, disappearing as quickly as she had come. Mr. Hayashi sipped the sweet, milky tea as the doctor took off his glasses and placed them on the table in front of him. In the dim light, he looked older than he was. Older, and very tired.
“There were six of us,” he began. “This was in Ypres, Belgium. There were two sipahis, Thapa and Mann; two civilians; I, a sub-assistant surgeon at the time; and of course, Khan.”
“He was Subedar-Major in those days—the highest rank granted to Indian soldiers. I think we thought it was a great thing at the time.” He laughed dryly. “If only we knew... Poor boys. Poor boys, us all. We never knew what we were getting into.”
“Few seldom do, where wars are concerned.” Mr. Hayashi said.
“The war was bad enough. It was this other business…” He stopped and shook his head. “I’m going about this all wrong. Best to, as they say, start at the beginning.” He took a sip of his tea.
“You asked me why I didn’t go to the funeral. I’ll tell you why. They are mourning a man I barely know.”
The doctor looked up.
“Let me explain.
“Very few remember Khan as he was. Those who do are either dead, or old like me. He was a different man when I met him. Not… better, you understand me? Just different. More decisive but also more impulsive. Not entirely a bad thing, but you must remember that we were in the middle of a war.
“But it won him a great many friends, I among them. He was well-regarded even among the white officers. I often heard our commanding officer say that if he wasn’t brown-skinned, he would have risen through the ranks. The sipahis in the regiment liked him too; he was companionable, told jokes even at the worst of times, and stood by you. In the war, you needed a friend like that. God knows I did.
“We were part of an Indian regiment sent to France; we landed in Marseilles before being sent to Belgium. Along the way, we became fast friends. His family and mine were of the same social class, and we found that we had much to talk about. He told us all kinds of stories about travelling the world, including, yes, going to Japan, and the strange and wonderful things he saw there.
“Half the time I didn’t know whether to believe him! But those were strange times, when a man wanted to believe in strange things. Besides, the men and I would have believed him if he said he had spoken with ghosts.
“So when Khan told us we were to shelter in the old church, we followed, as we always had.”
♦
“The war was nothing like we had expected. We had been in skirmishes back home, but this was a different beast. We hid in trenches all day; those who went over were cut to ribbons. I grew to dread the smell of sweat coming from the men next to me—the rank smell of terror and exhaustion mixed with urine and death.
“Khan remained calm through it all, but it was a near thing. I don’t remember much of my time there, but what I remember very clearly is his reassuring hand on my shoulder, with the rat-tat-tat of machine guns above us.
“In those days, I was sure I would die there—across the water, in the white man’s land. Men were dying like flies around us. But somehow, we survived. Until that day.
♦
“We were on retreat. I could hear the firing above us, behind us, around us. When the bombing began, the dead began to proliferate. I remember sprinting back through the remains of the city, trying desperately to read signs in a language I barely recognized. But it was impossible. Nothing was as it had been even a few hours ago. The city had been reduced to rubble and ash. Everywhere I ran, there was a body underfoot. I was a man trying to pick his way through a graveyard.
“In the midst of this, I found Khan. There were two other sipahis with him, poor souls like me. I remember I laughed when I saw him—he’s alive, he’s alive!—and he took me by the arm and shouted:
“‘Chalo, doctor!’
“We fled from street to street, with only a vague idea of where we were going. It was difficult to find our way amidst smoke and shouting and screaming. I remember seeing several dead horses and pitying the poor things, brought here to die in an alien world. The ground was muddy; our boots sank in and we struggled to pull them out. I would not say we ran so much as floundered. Periodically, a great cloud of mud and debris would blow up somewhere close to us. I did not pay any great mind to this. I just kept moving.
“When I later learned how much of the city had been lost in the artillery fire, it sounded unbelievable. That complete devastation, the loss of an entire city... and yet I had been there. And, well, the things I have seen since... .
“My apologies, where was I? Ah yes, the Germans were bombing and we were running, just running. I don’t remember having a clear plan in mind, other than just following Khan. Somehow, even in the madness, I found that I had the willpower to trust him.
“Somewhere along the way, we had picked up two civilians. They were injured when we found them, and doubtless would have died. I told Khan… but never mind, I have told you this.
“We moved again after we found them, slowed down, but now the bombing was behind us rather than around us. I began to feel hope when Thapa, who had run ahead, shouted to us that he had found an intact building.
“It was a church, and miraculously, it appeared to have escaped the worst of the shelling. Many years later it occurred to me that this alone should have struck us as strange.
“Barely a building around it was intact. Yet it did not seem strange for us to follow Khan in there.
“This church, how do I describe it to you? I feel like I must, even though it was nothing remarkable. From the outside, the building itself wasn’t much different from churches here in Calcutta. It had a tall spire, the end of which had been knocked down. The front doors were heavy wooden double doors, painted red, under a stone arch. As we got closer, I could see that it was damaged; the wall to the right had caved in, and the doorway was piled high with rubble.
“Inside, the pews had been smashed to bits, and pieces of once-beautiful stained glass windows lay shattered on the floor. I remember stepping on the glass and wondering which saint’s face I was stepping on. It almost felt blasphemous.
“Hayashi-san, I will tell you this: even now, when I close my eyes and think of the war, I think of this place first. Not the bombs. Not the bullets. Not the thousands of men abandoned among the ruins. But that narrow rubble-strewn path. Dust everywhere and us choking, dragging the civilians along. And that room… that room, Hayashi-san, how do I tell you about that room? It haunts me.
♦
“It was the work of a few minutes, removing the rubble near the door. The civilians were in no condition to help themselves so it was the four of us who got them through the door. Thapa carried the woman in, half fainting. Her daughter was mostly awake, one half of her pale face blood-splattered, as I hoisted her in my arms and carried her inside the airless church.
“I say airless, because that is what it felt like. From the moment I entered, my breath was taut in my lungs. Thapa nearly staggered and Mann had to rush and grab him. I thought the boy would faint, his face was so pale. But somehow, between the four of us, we managed it, and I ordered them to lay the civilians down on the ground and began to check my supplies. Truth be told, I felt a little dizzy as well—whether from blood loss or the intensity of the last few hours, I didn’t know.
“All this while the sounds of bombing had retreated to a shallow buzz in the distance, as if we were leagues away from the action rather than just a few streets. I remember wondering at the lack of sound, but I was also grateful for it and paid it little heed. I had two patients to tend to, after all.
“The next few hours, I remember very little of. Some memories do come to mind: Khan pacing, always pacing. Mann sitting across from me, watching me tend to the civilians. Thapa, pacing as well—he would get as far as the door, glance out and then resume.
“None of us left.
“It might seem, Hayashi-san, by my descriptions that we were waiting for something. And we were. But for what, I never knew. My breath was razor sharp in my lungs. I felt like if I said a word, it would cut my throat.
“By late afternoon, my head was beginning to feel heavy. I remember leaning against a wall and then suddenly sitting up again because the wall felt wet. Spongy. At the time, I put it down to combat fatigue, but the dreadful wetness of it... I can still sometimes feel it trickling down my ear. It’s enough to drive a man mad, I tell you. And we were being driven mad: by the war, by the suffocating silence and by the tap-tap-tap of Khan’s pacing.
“It was near evening when the distant sounds of the shelling finally stopped and I told Khan that neither of the women was going to live. I ought to have told him that before, but I… could not. It seems almost nothing now—two people we would never meet again—but in that moment, it was devastating.
“Who were they? Ah, I forget their faces. A mother and her daughter, I believe. Yes, dreadful, isn’t it? Dreadful how I’ve forgotten their faces. At the time, I swore I would never.
“I remember the ghastly expression Khan had on his face when I told him. I remember because it looked a lot like hope, except run wretched by the war. I knew what he was thinking: now we could move faster, without their deaths on our conscience. We had tried. He had tried.
“I imagine much the same thoughts were visible on my face as well.
“But then his face changed and he glanced at Mann and Thapa, both dozing beside the dying bodies, and said in a low voice, ‘Come see this, Doctor. I’ve found something.’
“He led me behind the altar and to the unassuming looking door I had taken to be the priest’s quarters. When he opened it however, it led to a dark staircase. We both peered into it.
“‘Cellars?’ I asked him. He shook his head.
“‘I’ve heard they have tunnels down there.’ He struck a match, which barely lit the entrance. ‘We could look around, avoid the streets.’
“I was dubious. This was not how I had hoped to leave. I remember arguing with him fiercely in whispers…. The bombing seemed to have stopped, in the dark the four of us could make our way out—
“He laughed in the face of all my arguments, but acceded to one point. He would go down and take a look. If it seemed like a dead end, we’d abandon it. How did that sound to me?
“It sounded terrible. But I could find no position from which to push back against that disarming smile. He was so eloquent in those days, Hayashi-san. I was like a moth to his flame. I had no chance.
“I let him go.
♦
“We waited. After a while, Thapa awoke and asked after him. I pointed to the door and told him what had happened. He went up to it and looked down and I saw him turn pale. Thinking something dreadful, I rushed to the door and looked down, but saw nothing. Turning to Thapa, I demanded to know what the devil he had been playing at, scaring a man like that.
“‘Very sorry, sir,’ Thapa told me, ‘but the smell is horrible.’ He turned away from the door and, stumbling to the altar, proceeded to empty the contents of his stomach in a splattering mess on the floor.
“Only then did the smell hit me. Sour, like Thapa’s vomit, and pungent like the piss and sweat of dying men, carried through air laden with heat and death—like a trench stuffed with corpses.
♦
“I sat with Thapa after that and took his pulse. He shook in my arms as I did it. His pulse was weak, but recovering. I lay him down, with stern instructions to rest unless he wanted to keel over. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Mann, watching us with feverish eyes. Another dying man. Two dying men, and a third at the bottom of the stairs.
“What would you have done, Hayashi-san?
“I’ll tell you what I did. I went down the stairs.
♦
“It was a short descent and soon I was at the bottom, peering into the endless darkness. It smelled pungent and the walls were wet with some residue. I put my nose to it. There was no smell, which was an odd thing in itself, considering the sheer number of other odours that were assaulting my senses.
“I lit a match and found myself looking at the opening of a dark tunnel. I stepped forward, and immediately my match flickered in some wind I could not feel. I stopped and listened as hard as I could—there was nothing. I promise you, there was no sound.
“I waited for a minute or two but soon that terrible darkness began to feel like it might suffocate me. I steeled myself; if I didn’t go now, I would flee screaming from this place. And I began to walk.
“As I recall it now, it felt like I walked for hours, but the sipahis later told me that I was down there no longer than fifteen minutes.
“My remembrance of this is unremarkable. That’s funny, now that I think about it. The rest of my memories are alive with the sharp stillness of that day—the church, Khan, the men—but this walk, this long walk, I almost remember it with fondness.
“The tunnel turned twice and then ended abruptly. I was almost at the end when I knew I wasn’t going to find Khan. I stood at the last bend, where I could just barely make out the dead end a few yards ahead of me. The lit match I was holding was burning down, and my matchbox was almost empty. I blew out the one I was holding, struck another and began to turn. Even then you see, I was thinking that perhaps I had missed a turn somewhere behind me.
“In that darkness, I heard a sound. I will remember it till the day I die, but I don’t know how to describe it to you. Choking? Yes, that’s right. I stood in the darkness and heard a man choking to death behind me.
“I turned.
“He was there. Or rather… no, no, he was there. It was him. Him in that wall. Him with his arm stretched out towards me, half-embedded in the wall that was eating him.
♦
“Forgive me for that pause. You are very attentive, Hayashi-san. I’ve not had such an attentive listener for a while. I will continue in a moment.
♦
“He was in the wall. At first I thought, he is stuck in a crack. But then I saw the wall contract and relax, like a breath, and Khan’s body slid in deeper. I saw one half of his face disappear into it. The remaining half—the remaining eye—fixed onto me with some sort of desperate intensity. His one dangling arm flopped helplessly like a fish. Half his mouth opened sluggishly and then closed again. I heard him choke.
“No, I heard him speak. He spoke. He said—
“‘Bhago.’
“Run.
♦
“How do I explain to you what I felt in that moment? I was not afraid. I was awash. I was teetering on the brink of a precipice. I was a child looking down into the chasm of my creator’s mind, and it had no purpose for me.
“Are you a religious man, Hayashi-san? I was.
♦
“The wall next to me was breathing. I could feel warm, wet, damp, hot breath washing over me, like that of a large dog. But this was larger than any dog. And quieter too.
“I remember looking at it and watching the bricks move. The wall breathed like a newborn foal, with jittery breaths, uncertain of what it was doing. Unclear of this new world, desirous of its purpose, just beginning to kick its legs—
“I give you the foal imagery, because it is the easiest. It is also completely wrong. I need you to understand this, Hayashi-san. It is wrong. It was nothing like a newborn foal. Only I, in that moment, cresting that mountain of madness, thought that it was, and that thought has stuck with me since then.
“If I had to describe it now, it would be like… a wall breathing. Exactly as ludicrous and terrible as that sounds.
♦
“I did not run. I ought to have. But my legs, in a moment of supreme cowardice, would not carry me. I also found myself possessed by an incredible idea: I wanted to touch the wall. I wanted to see if I could feel the breath, trace the veins, find the beating heart.
“And in that moment, from the darkness, I heard the half-choked word again.
“‘Bhago.’
♦
“What do you think it takes to destroy a man? Death? Mutilation? Seeing the terrible toll a war may extract from a human body and yet not stop? The war should have been enough to destroy us all. That we lived is one of the only two pieces of evidence I have of the existence of a human spirit. The other is the man who tried to save me that night.
“Hayashi-san, you would be glad to hear this of your friend: All the love and humanity lacking in the war, I found that night in one man. My friend who loved me and asked me to run.
“I wish I could tell you I did something wonderful for him in return.
♦
“Where was I? Yes. I ran to the wall. At that moment, I had some half-baked notion of getting him out of there. I would not leave him to die. I did not realize that he was beyond death.
“My arms went around his waist, half of which was in the wall. I felt them brush against the insides of the wall, against the Wet and the Sodden. I am a doctor. I know blood vessels. And as I pulled, I heard them tear and watched as a stream of black-red sludge began to leak from the wall.
“Khan was weeping. At least, it sounded like weeping. But you could not have separated me from him if you tried. I had found purpose, and by the gods who had forsaken me, I was going to see it through.
“I tore him from the wall. Yes, tore. His head came last; I saw the wall stretch with his skin, and then I wrenched it free. As I did, I saw his eye, staring at the wall, at the insides of it. It looked forlorn. His other eye was fixed on me. It was empty.
“You see, Hayashi-san, here I arrive at the crux of the problem: It was me. It was me.
♦
“He was never the same, of course. I half carried him out of there and, when I reached the stairs, found Thapa and Mann making their way down. With their help, we hoisted him out and into the main room of the church. I remember telling them some dreadful made up story of foul smelling gases that would make a man faint. The Germans had been employing chemical gases, so I suppose it was not completely unbelievable. But, to be honest, I don’t think I was very convincing. Yet they saw my face that day and said nothing, and I could not have been more grateful.
“I won’t bore you with the details after this: we found another regiment a few streets away and managed to get to safety. Mann died later that year—a grenade blew off his leg—and Thapa was part of the regiment sent to Egypt. I lost track of him. I believe he died there. As for me, I was eventually sent back to India when the war ended. There I found Khan again.
“I wondered, for years after, what would have happened if I had just… left him there. It’s a dreadful thought, and not one any God-fearing man ought to have, but… now it seems to have been the only decent thing to do. The right thing to do.
“As for the rest of the story, you know what happened after, of course. He married a nurse he met at the hospital, and retired a few years after. He was decorated for his valor in the war, of course, and then he just… faded.
“I saw him on a few occasions, and he could not be more different than the man I remembered. He would begin to say something and then slip into a sort of puzzled silence. As if the words were there, but just beyond him. Or as if he had too many words, and none of them quite fit. As if he was quite beyond, as they say, the human condition. They began to say he was a bit touched in the head.
“We never met face to face again. It was my cowardice, more than anything. I was afraid of what he would say, though my strongest feeling is that he wouldn’t actually remember me. But more than that, I was afraid of what he would see. If I was the catalyst that was needed to awaken something both mundane and yet dreadful—
—like a wall that breathed.”
♦
The doctor stopped talking. Mr. Hayashi noticed that he was gripping the table very hard, so that his knuckles had gone white. In a moment most unlike himself, he put his own hand on top of the doctor’s. He felt the man start.
“You were very brave, doctor.” Mr. Hayashi said gruffly.
The doctor looked at him. “You loved him,” he said, as a way of understanding. Mr. Hayashi wiped his eyes.
“A little too much. I told him I would wait for him. When he didn’t return, I thought…”
“...that he wasn’t coming back.” the doctor finished.
“Yes. I married. She died a few years ago. And I thought I ought to come here. To see him and if he… remembered.”
“I am sorry.”
“No.” Mr. Hayashi was smiling. “I am not sorry. I know my friend was loved.”
“It is very generous of you to say so.” He looked down at Mr. Hayashi’s hand, which was still in his. Mr. Hayashi noticed, and with an apology, made to withdraw it.
“No, please.” the doctor put another on top of his. “Please. You have been so kind to me. I ought to have died in that wretched place. You have—”
“You ought not to have, at all.” Mr. Hayashi said firmly. He squeezed the hand once more before Dr. Bose relinquished it. In the dim light of the setting sun from the window, for a moment, Mr. Hayashi saw a much younger man—a man who would have run into the mouth of a horror to save a friend he loved. It made him miss the bright young man he knew, with an ache he barely recognized. He got to his feet.
“I have kept you for long enough. But I feel like I must thank you for this tale. But I…” he stumbled with the words. “I do not know how to.”
The doctor also rose. He indicated the door behind him. “I know a wonderful little place for dinner. Would you like to join me?”
Mr. Hayashi hesitated, and then picked up his hat. As he turned, he paused for a moment to look at his now-friend.
“You were wonderfully brave.” And then, with a lurch of pain somewhere deep in his being. “And how desperately he must have suffered.”
“How desperately we all suffer.” the doctor said quietly. “But yet, despite it all, here we are.”
Mr. Hayashi smiled and took his arm. §
