He was hating Caesar and mocking him. And Caesar snorted to placate him “don’t worry” and swished his tail hypocritically.
Sure, don’t worry … and then you’ll make with the hoof! You thick-headed envious brute, you’ll smash all my ribs yet! Damn you and your entire warrior race!
We didn’t want to go to war — they made us do it.
They made you do it? For all your strength? So why didn’t you bite and kick them? Why didn’t you bristle like a cat and throw them? Instead of tormenting an innocent young man here now. Yes, but those were famous horsemen (you were not ridden by Socrates or Plato). The combat bugling, the charges, the gallops! … Monuments in impressive postures! Neither Homer nor Shakespeare nor Dante has such monuments as you, Horse the Great! You’ve become a major celebrity indeed!
“To the horses!” bellowed Nettle suddenly, fit to shake the stable. And the words gave birth to a weird bedlam: human and equine voices mingling to produce a horrible shrilling (they feared each other), neighing and the screams of those kicked by the hooves. The men rushed in, storming the stalls, and there went up a terrible supplicant shouting:
Prince, stand!
Lisa, stand!
Boy, stand!
Ziko, stand!
………
………
………
in voices full of wretched human despair as if each man were invoking his own saint. Hooves resounded on wooden partitions and the hapless young men leaped back out of the way, dodged kicks, and coaxed the exalted animals with bread and sugar, and some of them, the more daring ones, pacified them (covertly) with open-palm slaps between the eyes. (Raising a hand against sacred equinity! the crime carried a heavy penalty.)
But Caesar’s glorious name was not mentioned. He was not asked to please “stand.” His groom did not step forward. He did not rush into the stall under Caesar’s hooves. He remained standing in the walk with “Numbskull,” who was still doggedly barking at the lightbulb.
At Nettle’s command Melkior did not move. Perhaps he wanted to move, he hadn’t meant to resist, but his feet would not budge. All his fear had gone into his feet and they anchored themselves in security, knees touching lightly, consoling each other. Then a darkness began to descend, Numbskull’s lightbulb dimmed, and his barking became distant, distant, barely audible, from somewhere beyond the silent hills … “He did it — he managed to turn off the light,” thought Melkior pleasurably, sinking into the murk …
Rain beating on his eyes, lightning flashing, thunderbolts striking his head … He had wisely gone still and was waiting for the storm to blow over. Day was already breaking, he could make out a mournful grayness: his eyes were peering into the fog; he could hear strange voices, up there, above his head, floating in the air, whispering softly, gently, considerately — angels conferring. Never mind, he’d better wait for the sun to come out, to warm him and dry away the rain and the night’s horror …
But the rain splashed down again … Slaps smacking his cheeks … Human words near at hand … Horses, the stable …
He opened his eyes. Faces … a lot of funny noses … Numbskull’s lightbulb shining on above, under the roof beam … The barking had stopped. …
“All right, Mama’s boy, can you see me?” asked Nettle’s face from up on high, enormous, round, painted on an inflated balloon. “A shame we haven’t got a Perfumery Corps, it would’ve been just the job for you, eh, doll? Handling scented soap, not horse shit,” Nettle was joking crudely up there above Melkior, his hands ready for any further face-slapping. “Sorry, ducks, but that’s the army for you — shit and piss. Man’s work. Can you stand?”
Melkior stirred. He felt dirty wetness around and on himself (they were pouring water from the horse trough on me) and sank back down, helplessly. He was lying on wet and smelly straw, in mud. Around him were a multitude of boots in a ring, with legs growing upward from them, slim like sickly trees, swaddled in olive drab nappies. And above him faces, curious, derisive, strange, unknown. I have betrayed Caesar — and a kind of smile tickled his lips.
“Get him up,” commanded Nettle. “You and you, take him outside, let him get a bit of air …”
Day was breaking, gray and desperate. Dreadful birds were cawing from bare black branches. In the distance, the city was waking, stretching its limbs, yawning into the hopeless sky, muttering morosely.
Melkior shivered with the cold: wetness around the neck, wet on his back, on his chest, a wet army cap on his head. Wet wetted, wet living.
Two kind recruits helped him up on either side.
“Well done, man,” spoke up the one on the left. “Next stop pneumonia, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s a month in the hospital, plus at least three weeks’ Light Duties Only afterward. With any luck, there might also be a spot on the lungs and a medical discharge.”
“I didn’t fake any of it. I think I passed out.”
“You think, therefore you are — a genuine case, I mean …” laughed the left-hand recruit. “Come on, man, don’t be afraid — you don’t think I’m having it any better than you, do you? We’re in the same shit.”
“You’re shivering — you’ve got a fever,” said Righty with selfless hope.
“You want to report for a medical tomorrow.”
“I’m wet through, I’m cold,” said Melkior through chattering teeth. “Can’t I report today?”
“Too late. You must report to Staff first thing in the morning tomorrow.” Then, having glanced at a barrack where lights had just gone on, “Oh look, the hotel guests are waking, the pajama boys are getting up.”
“What’s that — officers’ quarters?” asked Melkior naïvely.
“Pajama boys? Golden chains around their necks. Ministers’ offspring!” said Righty, taking off his cap with mocking respect. “Our young Majesty’s nursing cousins,” he added, whispering in Melkior’s ear.
“That, you must know, is the ‘exemplary school of rough military life,’” said Lefty. “They get the exemplary treatment, and the rest of us get the rough. You’ll be hearing about it in Theory Classes.”
“So they … don’t groom horses?”
“No, it’s the other way about — horses groom them.”
“The boys were transferred over here from their regiments to have someone wipe their asses for them,” said Righty humorlessly. “Their daddies came up with the idea of setting up a Motor Transport Company to keep the lads occupied. So they drive army vehicles up and down the capital, going to their Mamas on Sundays. They’re generally back in the barracks by Monday; some don’t come back for days at a time, it all depends on how powerful Daddy is. They’re off to the mess now, for cocoa.”
“And when the war breaks out they’ll be off to Switzerland with their Mamas, to treat their enlarged hila. You and I have to spit blood, my friend, to make it into the hospital. Unless the horses get you first.”
Melkior shuddered at the prospect. Nothing had helped: the fasting or the vigils. Pechárek had got him in his clutches after all. He had consigned the fifty-six kilograms’ worth of this wretched body (dwaftees … Kink and countwy) to Nettle the trainer in the royal reservation fenced with barbed wire. Procrastinating, delaying, passing examinations and medical boards — no go! Right, pal, this is where you’ll be preparing to shed blood and lay down your life! And here was Melkior trembling in death’s anteroom with cold and fear and a hundred other unspoken pains. He was not made for Nettle’s “man’s work,” the horse urine and the muck … his masculinity wasn’t adequate, the damned exclamation mark in front of his life!