the rivers are polluted and the birds are silent.
When I say I lived with heartless men, I use the word correcdy.
As the weeks wore on, we talked about going home and home stopped being a place where we quarrel as well as love. It stopped being a place where the fire goes out and there is usually some unpleasant job to be done. Home became the focus of joy and sense. We began to believe that we were fighting this war so that we could go home. To keep home safe, to keep home as we started to imagine it Now that our hearts were gone there was no reliable organ to stem the steady tide of sentiment that stuck to our bayonets and fed our damp fires. There was nothing we wouldn't believe to get us through: God was on our side, the Russians were devils. Our wives depended on this war. France depended on this war. There was no alternative to this war.
And the heaviest lie? That we could go home and pick up where we had left off. That our hearts would be waiting behind the door with the dog.
Not all men are as fortunate as Ulysses.
Our sustaining hope as the temperatures dropped and we gave up speech was to reach Moscow. A great city where there would be food and fire and friends. Bonaparte was confident of peace once we had dealt a decisive blow. He was already writing surrender notices, filling the space with humiliation and leaving just enough room at the bottom for the Czar to sign. He seemed to think we were winning when all we were doing was running behind. But he had furs to keep his blood optimistic.
Moscow is a city of domes, built to be beautiful, a city of squares and worship. I did see it, briefly. The gold domes lit yellow and orange and the people gone.
They set fire to it. Even when Bonaparte arrived, days ahead of the rest of the army, it was blazing and it went on blazing. It was a difficult city to burn.
We camped away from the flames and I served him that night on a scrawny chicken surrounded by parsley the cook cherishes in a dead man's helmet. I think it was that night that I knew I couldn't stay any longer. I think it was that night that I started to hate him.
I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a litde more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?
When Patrick arrived some days later I searched for him in the blistering cold and found him wrapped in sacks with a jar of some colourless liquid beside him. He was still look-out, this time watching for surprise enemy movements, but he was never sober and not all of his sightings were taken seriously. He waved the jar at me and said he'd got it in exchange for a life. A peasant had begged to be allowed to die with his family in the honourable way, in the cold all together, and had offered Patrick the jar. Whatever was in it had put him in a gloomy temper. I smelled it. It smelt of age and hay. I started to cry and my tears fell like diamonds.
Patrick picked one up and told me not to waste my salt
Meditatively, he ate it
'It goes well with this spirit it does.'
There is a story about an exiled Princess whose tears turned to jewels as she walked. A magpie followed her and picked up all the jewels and dropped them on the windowsill of a thoughtful Prince. This Prince scoured the land until he found the Princess and they lived happily ever after. The magpie was made a royal bird and given an oak forest to live in and the Princess had her tears made into a great necklace, not to wear, but to look at whenever she felt unhappy. When she looked at the necklace, she knew that she was not.
'Patrick, I'm going to desert. Will you come with me?'
He laughed. 'I may only be half alive now, but sure as I know I'd
When I say I lived with heartless men, I use the word correcdy.
As the weeks wore on, we talked about going home and home stopped being a place where we quarrel as well as love. It stopped being a place where the fire goes out and there is usually some unpleasant job to be done. Home became the focus of joy and sense. We began to believe that we were fighting this war so that we could go home. To keep home safe, to keep home as we started to imagine it Now that our hearts were gone there was no reliable organ to stem the steady tide of sentiment that stuck to our bayonets and fed our damp fires. There was nothing we wouldn't believe to get us through: God was on our side, the Russians were devils. Our wives depended on this war. France depended on this war. There was no alternative to this war.
And the heaviest lie? That we could go home and pick up where we had left off. That our hearts would be waiting behind the door with the dog.
Not all men are as fortunate as Ulysses.
Our sustaining hope as the temperatures dropped and we gave up speech was to reach Moscow. A great city where there would be food and fire and friends. Bonaparte was confident of peace once we had dealt a decisive blow. He was already writing surrender notices, filling the space with humiliation and leaving just enough room at the bottom for the Czar to sign. He seemed to think we were winning when all we were doing was running behind. But he had furs to keep his blood optimistic.
Moscow is a city of domes, built to be beautiful, a city of squares and worship. I did see it, briefly. The gold domes lit yellow and orange and the people gone.
They set fire to it. Even when Bonaparte arrived, days ahead of the rest of the army, it was blazing and it went on blazing. It was a difficult city to burn.
We camped away from the flames and I served him that night on a scrawny chicken surrounded by parsley the cook cherishes in a dead man's helmet. I think it was that night that I knew I couldn't stay any longer. I think it was that night that I started to hate him.
I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a litde more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?
When Patrick arrived some days later I searched for him in the blistering cold and found him wrapped in sacks with a jar of some colourless liquid beside him. He was still look-out, this time watching for surprise enemy movements, but he was never sober and not all of his sightings were taken seriously. He waved the jar at me and said he'd got it in exchange for a life. A peasant had begged to be allowed to die with his family in the honourable way, in the cold all together, and had offered Patrick the jar. Whatever was in it had put him in a gloomy temper. I smelled it. It smelt of age and hay. I started to cry and my tears fell like diamonds.
Patrick picked one up and told me not to waste my salt
Meditatively, he ate it
'It goes well with this spirit it does.'
There is a story about an exiled Princess whose tears turned to jewels as she walked. A magpie followed her and picked up all the jewels and dropped them on the windowsill of a thoughtful Prince. This Prince scoured the land until he found the Princess and they lived happily ever after. The magpie was made a royal bird and given an oak forest to live in and the Princess had her tears made into a great necklace, not to wear, but to look at whenever she felt unhappy. When she looked at the necklace, she knew that she was not.
'Patrick, I'm going to desert. Will you come with me?'
He laughed. 'I may only be half alive now, but sure as I know I'd
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