be fully dead if I set out with you in this wilderness.'
I didn't try to persuade him. We sat together sharing the sacks and the spirit and dreamed separately.
Would Domino come?
He didn't speak much since his injury, which had blown away one side of his face. He wore a cloth wrapped round his head and overlapping his scars to mop up the bleeding. If he stayed out in the cold for too long the scars opened and filled his mouth with blood and pus. The doctor explained it to him; something about the wounds going septic after he'd had himself stitched up. The doctor shrugged. It was a batde, he'd done what he could but what could he do with arms and legs everywhere and nothing but grape brandy to ease the pain and still the wounds? Too many soldiers are wounded, it would be better if they died. Domino was hunched up in Bonaparte's sledge in the rough tent where it was kept and he slept. He was lucky, looking after Bonaparte's equipment just as I was lucky working in the officers' kitchen. We were both warmer and better fed than anyone else. That makes it sound cosy...
We avoided the worst ravages of frostbite and we got food every day. But canvas and potatoes do not challenge the zero winter; if anything, they denied us the happy oblivion that comes with dying of cold. When soldiers finally lie down, knowing they won't get up again, most of them smile. There's a comfort in falling asleep in the snow.
He looked ill.
'I'm going to desert, Domino. Will you come with me?'
He couldn't talk at all that day, the pain was too bad, but he wrote in the snow that had drifted still soft under the tent.
crazy.
'I'm not crazy, Domino, you've been laughing at me since I joined up. Eight years you've been laughing at me. Take me seriously.'
He wrote, why?
'Because I can't stay here. These wars will never end. Even if we get home, there'll be another war. I thought he'd end wars for ever, that's what he said. One more, he said, one more and then there'll be peace and it's always been one more. I want to stop now.'
He wrote, future . And then he put a line through it.
What did he mean? His future? My future? I thought back to those sea-salt days when the sun had turned the grass yellow and men had married mermaids. I started my litde book then, the one I still have and Domino had turned on me and called the future a dream. There's only the present, Henri.
He had never talked of what he wanted to do, where he was going, he never joined in the aimless conversations that clustered round the idea of something better in another time. He didn't believe in the future, only die present, and as our future, our years, had turned so relendessly into identical presents, I understood him more. Eight years had passed and I was still at war, cooking chickens, waiting to go home for good. Eight years of talking about the future and seeing it turn into the present. Years of thinking, 'In another year, I'll be doing something different,' and in another year doing just the same.
Future. Crossed out.
That's what war does.
I don't want to worship him any more. I want to make my own mistakes. I want to die in my own time.
Domino was looking at me. The snow had already covered his words.
He wrote, you go.
He tried to smile. His mouth couldn't smile but his eyes were bright, and jumping up in the old way, in the way he'd jumped to pick apples from the tallest trees, he snatched an icicle from the blackened canvas and handed it to me.
It was beautiful. Formed from the cold and glittering in the centre. I looked again. There was something inside it, running through the middle from top to bottom. It was a piece of thin gold that Domino usually wore round his neck. He called it his talisman. What had he done with it and why was he giving it to me?
Making signs with his hands he made me understand that he could no longer wear it around his neck because of his sores. He had cleaned it and hung it out of sight and this morning had seen it so
I didn't try to persuade him. We sat together sharing the sacks and the spirit and dreamed separately.
Would Domino come?
He didn't speak much since his injury, which had blown away one side of his face. He wore a cloth wrapped round his head and overlapping his scars to mop up the bleeding. If he stayed out in the cold for too long the scars opened and filled his mouth with blood and pus. The doctor explained it to him; something about the wounds going septic after he'd had himself stitched up. The doctor shrugged. It was a batde, he'd done what he could but what could he do with arms and legs everywhere and nothing but grape brandy to ease the pain and still the wounds? Too many soldiers are wounded, it would be better if they died. Domino was hunched up in Bonaparte's sledge in the rough tent where it was kept and he slept. He was lucky, looking after Bonaparte's equipment just as I was lucky working in the officers' kitchen. We were both warmer and better fed than anyone else. That makes it sound cosy...
We avoided the worst ravages of frostbite and we got food every day. But canvas and potatoes do not challenge the zero winter; if anything, they denied us the happy oblivion that comes with dying of cold. When soldiers finally lie down, knowing they won't get up again, most of them smile. There's a comfort in falling asleep in the snow.
He looked ill.
'I'm going to desert, Domino. Will you come with me?'
He couldn't talk at all that day, the pain was too bad, but he wrote in the snow that had drifted still soft under the tent.
crazy.
'I'm not crazy, Domino, you've been laughing at me since I joined up. Eight years you've been laughing at me. Take me seriously.'
He wrote, why?
'Because I can't stay here. These wars will never end. Even if we get home, there'll be another war. I thought he'd end wars for ever, that's what he said. One more, he said, one more and then there'll be peace and it's always been one more. I want to stop now.'
He wrote, future . And then he put a line through it.
What did he mean? His future? My future? I thought back to those sea-salt days when the sun had turned the grass yellow and men had married mermaids. I started my litde book then, the one I still have and Domino had turned on me and called the future a dream. There's only the present, Henri.
He had never talked of what he wanted to do, where he was going, he never joined in the aimless conversations that clustered round the idea of something better in another time. He didn't believe in the future, only die present, and as our future, our years, had turned so relendessly into identical presents, I understood him more. Eight years had passed and I was still at war, cooking chickens, waiting to go home for good. Eight years of talking about the future and seeing it turn into the present. Years of thinking, 'In another year, I'll be doing something different,' and in another year doing just the same.
Future. Crossed out.
That's what war does.
I don't want to worship him any more. I want to make my own mistakes. I want to die in my own time.
Domino was looking at me. The snow had already covered his words.
He wrote, you go.
He tried to smile. His mouth couldn't smile but his eyes were bright, and jumping up in the old way, in the way he'd jumped to pick apples from the tallest trees, he snatched an icicle from the blackened canvas and handed it to me.
It was beautiful. Formed from the cold and glittering in the centre. I looked again. There was something inside it, running through the middle from top to bottom. It was a piece of thin gold that Domino usually wore round his neck. He called it his talisman. What had he done with it and why was he giving it to me?
Making signs with his hands he made me understand that he could no longer wear it around his neck because of his sores. He had cleaned it and hung it out of sight and this morning had seen it so
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