Lena is not dead, he is not going to die, why did they ever separate? That’s not the way life should go. One night she simply stopped snuggling up with her back against his belly.
It was all so cosy, before. They’d hold each other’s hand to turn the pages of a magazine, the advertisements, fashions even, was there a case for wearing divided skirts? Please, ladies, let us remain feminine, let us permit the elegance of the foot to intimate the slenderness of the leg which is discreetly encased in the bottom of a long skirt. Hans raised the hem of her skirt and kissed her leg in the Hotel Waldhaus in Waltenberg in 1913.
There is a vehicle in the middle of the German bivouac at Monfaubert now under attack by the dragoons. A voice rises above the battle, an Offizier who shouts orders, regroups his men. He stands on the running-board of a car. He directs his men to fire in groups, by bearings, in volleys: restore order, order is the better half of life.
The Offizier knows all about warfare, he is an old colonial hand, he was at Waterberg in Namibia, seven years ago already, Prussian troops against the Hereros, all the rebellious native tribes were driven back into the steppes of Omaheke, pursued from waterhole to waterhole.
And when there were no more wells, the savages dug holes fifteen metres deep looking for water. German patrols found large numbers of skeletons around holes which were dry, the Herero people were estimated to number eighty thousand, and of them fifteen per cent survived, that was in 1907, the beginning of the century, all forgotten. The starkness of the final tally is to be explained, in diplomatic circles, by the relative inexperience of the Reich in colonial affairs. ‘The cries of the dying,’ wrote Oberleutnant Graf Schweinitz, ‘and the ravings of the crazed rang out in the sublime silence of the infinite.’ With mounting success, the Offizier on his running-board is heard and obeyed.
The subaltern leading the 2nd troop of French dragoons breaks off from the target and redirects his men against the car from which the orders are being issued, a horse is hit and its rider is pitched over its neck and put out of action, the rest thunder by. Some dragoons are now surrounded by Prussians, the Prussians fire at them, shoot each other, shoot dragoons, the dragoons surround the car, ‘the mounted attack with drawn swords, which alone gives decisive results, is the principal modus operandi of the cavalry’, later there are voices, wouldn’t it have been better to attack on foot, with carbines? smaller losses, and the enemy well and truly put on the rack. Perhaps, but less panache that way. Before the attack, one of the French officers even shouted out ‘You can’t stop me dying in the saddle!’
The first priority now is to cut down the burly Prussian who is shouting the orders. In front of the car, a Feldwebel in a flat-topped steel helmet has picked up a lance, covers his officer, a dragoon runs his mount to the left of the lance, the Feldwebel turns the lance against the dragoon who lies flat on his horse’s neck to pass under the point but receives a terrible thrust, at the same instant his sword connects with the Prussian’s chest, another dragoon rides by, a thump in the ribs, falls on his back, brought down at point-blank range by a Prussian.
The rest of the dragoons have retreated to gather themselves for another charge, they close on the car and the Offizier, one dragoon goes down, another rides past, sabre held straight out stiff-armed, as if he is at drill and tilting at spinning quintains mounted on tripods, point of the blade angled up towards the chest, the point misses the chest, the strike is too high, the blade passes within centimetres of the man’s neck, a trained reflex, the dragoon slashes as he draws back the sabre, the Prussian officer ducks, the blade saws off his ear, his cheek, the whole of his mouth.
Blood spurts, more shouting, the advantage of the curved sabre tells, more shots, the horse goes down, the dragoon is unscathed, three German soldiers leap on him, they scream, the dragoon on his feet, he has lost his sabre, get away, don’t die in this abomination, war is an abomination, the dragoon hates war, he’s a lawyer, and a good horseman.
A German soldier grabs him from behind, holds him in a headlock, this is no dress parade, parades were before, the rider does not want to die, bloody war, go back to what life was before, quick, start over again, the rider is a lawyer, spring of 1914, they were heading for the abomination of war, it was then that it should have all been stopped, Poincaré elected President of the Republic, the rider didn’t want Poincaré, Fallières standing on the steps of the Elysée Palace sick at heart watching his successor climb the steps, says: ‘Poincaré, so it’s war.’
Another German soldier has picked up a bayonet and is trying to ram it into the dragoon pinioned by his comrade, Poincaré, man of the left, but a warmonger, still a republican all the same, the republicans had got together and nominated another candidate for the presidency, against the right, ‘Stout Pams’, these French bastards caught them napping, the Prussian is holding the bayonet awkwardly, he’s a mechanic not really a killer, Pams would have made a perfectly good President, Poincaré only second in the ballot held by the republican camp, he should have withdrawn his name, that was the convention, but it seems Poincaré had been offended, on the grass of Monfaubert other cavalrymen fall, scream, no one to help them, when things have calmed down a handful of medical orderlies will come, the Red Cross, surgical saws, disinfectant, in Paris since 1912, a sensible precaution, nuns are allowed to work in hospitals, they learned to assist surgeons who were being trained to operate using disinfectant only, without anaesthetic, on the poor.
Her flesh is much lighter, Hans looks at Lena’s bare back, the white fabric pulled down to her hips, her shock of red hair pulled up over the nape of her neck, the texture of her skin so smooth to his tongue. She is not dead. One night at Waltenberg her buttocks were all goose-pimples, how they had laughed, her laugh more raw, deeper than usual, Hans with his cheek against her hip had felt the strong flexing of her muscles as she laughed, her contralto voice. He can see the woman seated in the window with her back to the light, her back is three-quarters bare, her left breast just a little heavy in outline, it swells generously at a right angle from her ribs before curving roundly back to rejoin her body, he starts to get to his feet, makes it on to one knee alongside the armchair, is about to say don’t move and cover the breast with little kisses, it is not the final image he had carried away of her, but it is the one which will protect him against the inferno.
The German soldier lunges at the Monfaubert dragoon, all he has is the bayonet in his hand, he tries to stick the blade into the chest of the dragoon who is being held from behind in a headlock by his comrade, the dragoon struggles, calls for help, kicks his legs out in front of him like a girl who’s had too much to drink dancing the can-can or a tango, the bayonet catches him in the thigh, in the hands, he is bleeding, the German soldier aims for his heart, the bayonet just slides over his ribs, there is more and more blood, put a stop to the whole thing, Poincaré the warmonger, the 1913 election, the republicans had chosen another candidate for the presidency, yes, but there’s the insult to Poincaré, what insult? the insult had left him free to canvass the votes of his opponents on the right, the warmongering hawks and those who still thought Dreyfus was a traitor, Poincaré, the war, and ready to do anything to become President of the Republic, not a traitor, freed of his obligations by the insults directed at his wife by the republican tittle-tattle emanating from his own camp.