I rejoined the regular troops. They talked of bandits and mass slaughter, but I knew they were deceiving themselves – it was the new human mind. I saw signs of recent battles; I noted them particularly.
The sky was usually grey, yet I could see the road for miles; every object was distinct: piles of stones, gravel, a steamroller, axes in use, logs, small bridges. We drove along red roads, between trees sunk into soaking fields. We reached the forest, and from then on it was never out of sight, even from the suburbs of the town, house after house – people walking, carrying; bundled up human beings. It was cold; we lost the way; it rained when it should have been fine.
My reckless driver handled his car – he put on the brakes to avoid a collision; I was frantic; the powerful car spun round twice before overturning; I sprang from the car. He remained calm. The car righted itself; he gave a contemptuous flap of his hand, indifferent to my shouted protest. The road was metalled; the earth had frozen; the forest was not far away; the land was derelict. “Now we have lost contact with our escort,” the driver said. “We don’t need an escort.” “Impossible. We cannot go on” – with fear in his eyes – “there are bandits; the roads are too dangerous.” “We are going on.” “I have other things to do – important duties – I cannot go any farther.” “You must go on – it is an order.” “No. Stay where you are.” I had no alternative. I depended on him – not least because I could not drive the car.
“The road is not really so bad.” He did not reply. We were in the front seats of the car, by the side of the road, just within the forest. He did not say “this is the forest”; he did not speak – he had other things on his mind. He studied an instruction booklet, which seemed to relate to the revolver which he had taken from its holster and laid across his knees. A farm to our left had, or had not, a patch of birch trees growing close to the walls of the farmhouse – I was not certain about it. A family was being taken from the house and loaded onto a lorry, together with their belongings. The driver noticed my concern. “Do you want to see them taken away? It’s only half a mile.” “What is there to see?” “Nothing. It’s just a place like this.” He said that to intrigue me, to interest me in something else. I replied: “Then there is no point in wasting time over it.” The map he showed me, on which was marked the place to which the people were to be taken, showed clearly that to have followed them would have taken me in the wrong direction, back towards the troops’ headquarters. I could see also that his map did not correspond with the map I had made – nor did it bear any relation to the map the girl had given me. “By the way,” I asked him, “will the family be loaded from one lorry onto another? Or will they stay on the same lorry?” “They change at a small town thirty miles away; I hear that they are going to be allowed to stay in that place. It is a pity there is no road to it – you ought to see it: it’s a beautiful town.” “I’m afraid there is not enough daylight left.” “You should see it. The fountains are famous.” “Wasn’t the town destroyed?” “No, the inhabitants were cleared out and it was preserved for hunting. The army was sent round it, not through it, so it did not suffer. It still contains rare specimens of wild animals.” He showed me a newspaper photograph of a young man in a light-grey uniform similar to his own, though his was darker. He laughed. “A boy. A bandit killed in a raid; he was thirteen years old.” I said that this was a surprise to me – I had not realized that these gangsters were so young. “Are there many left?” I asked.
“Perhaps eight or ten. Far too many – they must be shot down.” I was winning his confidence. He talked seriously, with terrific enthusiasm. “They are a pest. Their stupidities and brutalities no longer trouble us, but they attack farms and kill the animals. They drink the blood and leave the carcasses.” “Blood?” “They get desperate and kill sheep. They had all been driven back across the frontier, until one of their old leaders escaped from prison and built them up again.” He showed me another photograph, of a naked man crawling between ranks of soldiers like a dog – a small, tough dog roaming the ruins. “We have a battalion competition,” he said. “There is a money prize for any man who can capture two bandits on the same day. This one was caught in a pit. A hole was dug, the top covered, mud and grass scattered over it. We left some food – he was starving and made a rush for it. The earth collapsed under him. It was cruel. Imagine the weight: the earth fell on top of him as he crashed down.” His face was sweating with excitement; I had a sudden glimpse of what it must have been like. “We pulled him out the next day – he was alive, but with badly broken limbs; we chased him, you can see, hemmed him in; after I managed to get a rope round his legs he couldn’t resist; once the noose was pulled tightly we dragged him in the desired direction. The others struggled to get their ropes round him – they leant on him with all their weight; even that was not the end of it.” “You seem to have enjoyed yourselves.” He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt. His upper arm was contained in a plaster cast; his finger went along the surface of the stuff, which cut his arm almost into equal parts. He wanted to talk freely. I knew that the way to get him to tell me what had become of the girl was to ask him about himself. He told me about his family, the war, and, in a gesture of friendship, he said that I must sign his autograph book. “You must start a fresh page.” “I am in a special category,” I remarked, as I wrote my name on a blank page at the back of the instruction booklet. As I wrote, I lifted the corner of the preceding page, to try to read the other names. He snatched the book away. “Tell me,” I asked in a friendly tone, “how were you taken into the army?” “When I got to the camp I was told what would happen if I didn’t join up – they told us again and again. Then the war ended and they said we were no longer required – that we could return home. I refused. They sent me away. I picked up some food from the floor and was sent to prison for stealing.” “When did you learn that you were wanted again?” “They never told me, but I knew it would happen, and I started off. The nearest railway station was two hundred miles away; I walked from one place to the other.” “How did you manage to live?” “I did some work, serving my country, then went on.” He was under twenty. He had an amused look on his face. “I was joking,” he said. “I was not taken – I went by myself.” “You must have been taken,” I protested. “I am telling the truth.” “Did you have to prove who you were before they would take you back?” He laughed. “No, they knew.”
While waiting in the car, we had eaten the remains of our food. It was still light: I could still see the trees; I wanted to see them. I said to him: “You know that I am trying to trace a girl. Have you any information as to where she may be?” “She’s in a room.” He was joking. I would get nothing from him. I needed to speak to her. I was exhausted and lay on the ground – it was frozen; there was no light or water; she lived in a destroyed town; she could only hope to get one kind of work. The bridges were down, nothing would be done; it was impossible – there was no point in looking for the girl: the town was erased, nothing remained, she had been killed, people lived in holes, nothing lived above the ground.
The lorry returned, filled with soldiers armed with sub-machine guns. The commander was in civilian clothes. He had heard of my change in plans, and he made it clear that he and his men would accompany me. “I have come to offer you an escort for your journey.” “That is most thoughtful of you,” I replied, “but there is no need for me to take advantage of your generosity. I came this far without an escort, and I think I can manage the rest alone.” “Then I shall follow you.” “In that case I shall be delighted to have your company. I shall be leaving immediately.” We shook hands, and he walked back to the lorry. My driver mumbled: “I don’t like it. That’s bad.” He studied his map: “Don’t you think it would be better if we went through the forest tomorrow rather than tonight?” I agreed. I had had enough. I told him to inform the commander. “From now on he must be advised of my plans or change of plans.” We could not take the route by which we had come. The temporary wooden bridge had been swept away by the spring floods.
White clouds and sunlight: the winter had gone. Spring revealed the tears in our clothes. The troops put up a prefabricated shed. The length of the pieces varied, but the thickness was five inches by five inches, tongued on one side, grooved on the opposite edge – one piece slotted into the other. The commander shouted orders: “We need twelve hundred blocks to build a house. Work with fury. March. March. A town can be built in this way.” It was for my benefit. They cemented the floor and the walls; the long process ended, the floor soon spoilt – the whitened stone got coated with mud. I asked why they were building a house so isolated in the forest. They blew up the house and burned the greater part of the two remaining walls. Under the open sky they assembled the planks and wooden frames to construct the wooden shed which was to serve as a temporary shelter until the house could be rebuilt in a proper manner, and they slung petrol over the wood and fired bullets into the pile.
It was near the end of the steady, plodding slaughter. They were shooting from the upper storeys of gutted houses; they hurled down bricks; bricks blocked the streets.
By myself, without a guide, I didn’t know where to go next; I wondered how she was earning her living. It looked like being a filthy business. I was tired of trying to keep warm, tired of the tedious task of rebuilding. “When do we return?” No answer.
The escort was ready. We drove at seventy miles an hour. We were in control, flying from town to town. The people were aware of our presence: they went about in threes; they whispered as we passed; when we were close they preferred not to speak – it was too risky. We passed an openwork stone wall. “What is that?” “Our monument to the men who died fighting.” “How many men?” “Eight.” “How did they die?” “They were tried and shot.” From their precious supply of petrol they gave us enough for the journey back to town. There were not many hours of daylight left. The driver mumbled: “I think the light will last. We shall make it.” He tried, furiously. One hour’s light still in hand, a bare arm stopped the car; the door opened; he had half clambered in when he cried “Who is in there?” and fell back onto the road. The driver went to him but returned alone. Ahead was a cart loaded with hay; it kept to the middle of the road in spite of our violent hooting; we fired shots in the air and it still kept to the middle of the road; the cart had a front axle and a rear axle; the rebel farmer was a careful driver; we were hundreds of miles from the town painted on the back of the cart. The road was bad – anything might be in store for us. We forced the cart into the ditch at the side of the road; the horse, tangled with the harness, lay on its back in the ditch – the hoofs in the air reminded me of a scene in a film. We heard the man calling out; we found the body gleaming yellow; he wiped the tears from his face, rushed forwards and demanded, was silent when the driver told him, then went over to look at the body and walked on towards the village. A couple of men walked about the village; no effort had been made to repair the doors of the houses. “It is difficult to get anyone interested. They have no civic pride,” the commander informed me. “They are not progressive – they have a school but not one student. The hens lay small eggs and the hogs don’t fatten. What can we do? They are like insects; they store small things they have made; they have gold hidden in the earth or under the roof. It’s been a bad season – they have become victims and left their houses, or they have stayed inside and starved. They need money – only money would protect them against the bandits and the havoc that follows the spring floods. The forests could have been exploited, the railways put in order; three hundred-ton barges could have sailed up that river and passed below the bridge.”
We tore through the town. We wrecked like fury. The public baths had been only partly destroyed – they had begun to repair the doors. “We have a powerful new light – it was installed the other day – and we have painted the doors.” We wrenched the handles off the doors, shot to pieces the apparatus, slit the padding in the soundproof room. We crowded into the room. We ate bread and ham. “What do you want?” Silence. A boy in a light-grey jacket with a sub-machine gun: “Get out or I shoot.” He stared round at us, his fear shown by his grip on the butt; he was trying to work out what to do next. “We’ll never give up. We’ll fight. We don’t need tractors – we want horses, we want bread.” Some drunken soldiers had shot one of the horses. The commander spoke quietly: “Look at this.” He took a wrapped toffee from his pocket and threw it on the floor a couple of feet in front of the boy. The young soldier, awkwardly, transferring the heavy gun from his right hand to his left, bent forwards to pick up the sweet. A shot sounded but made no echo in the soundproof room. The commander continued: “As for horses, only the collective has the right to own them; if one or a dozen horses die, the individual has no cause to fear.”
We had breakfast of white rolls and butter, two eggs and coffee. I was accustomed to destruction – there were standards of destruction – the little town had been destroyed. There was nothing. The thing had disappeared. Not a brick visible. A man appeared out of the ground, a boy from a hole stood beside the man. “What do you live on?” “Potatoes.” “No corn?” “I can plant only potatoes.” The commander indicated that things were not so bad now that the land had been cleared of mines: animals were no longer injured by exploding shells. “Not long ago any one of these people would have lost his own son or his wife in exchange for a sound calf or a pig.” He had seen cattle caught in minefields – whole collections of the feet of animals, legs severed at the knee, bones sprouting from bushes; and, in cottages, collections of hoofs, fossilized, kept.
I changed my plans. I told the commander that I intended to stop at the next large town. “As you please.” Racing through the rain, the driver accelerated, the heavy tyres skidded sideways across the metalled road. I looked back. “Where is the escort?” He seemed indifferent, increased his speed; the rain smashed against the windscreen. “Stop. We must wait for them.” They soon discovered their mistake, and a minute or two later we saw them behind us, as I intended. We drove on towards the town – a few lights miles ahead across the bare land uninterrupted by any tree or building – no traffic, no noise; we travelled slowly. Under waiting clouds we entered the darkened town. The headlights of the lorries flashed on blank spaces – remains of houses, flat ground where shops had stood. “You won’t be able to go any farther.” I got out and walked towards the seven-storeyed silent blaze from the lit windows of the new hotel. Behind me the driver worked in the rain, mending a punctured tyre.