Hey friends, I posted some stuff here long ago and got some outstanding advice, namely to read Tolstoy and Hamsun, which I have done. Anyway, I'm back with something new. Let me know what you think.

Somewhere Out There

The French night wraps cool spring fingers around you as the barracks door closes and you are left alone with the belly of April pressing against you, swollen with life. The muted voices of your comrades force shards of conversation into your ears. Someone-it sounds like Marcel- asks Mathieu if he received a reduced sentence in the gulag for voting for Mitterrand. Mathieu says the gulag sounded better than being a millice before the sound of a scuffle cuts him off and their indecipherable shouting shakes the pillars of silence erected during sunset.

Go.

You are almost late for sentry duty and must report to the officer in charge.

As you wade deeper into the loamy Marne darkness, wandering through the army base that has become as familiar to you as your hometown, it occurs to you that you are taking part in a sacred ritual of your homeland; the ancient insomnia of the sentry. Sleepless sentries have waited through centuries of French nights such as these and here you are, ready to stand watch like a pouli in the trenches, a rear guard of Napoleon’s Grande Armee, a Frank crusader or a tribal Gaul.

Stop.

You have reached the building you need. Enter the small hut and smell the stench of old sweat, smoke and mildew in this concrete slab of a building. Listen to the tinny radio playing an old Serge Gainsbourg song you’ve never enjoyed. Think of how kitsch he seems, although you’re fond of his absurd drunken antics and the shit he pulled at Strasbourg in 1980. Now talk dully to the officer sitting behind the battered desk with little on it besides a small French flag and a clipboard. Try to sound relaxed yet formal as you say: “Private Emile Baudin, reporting for sentry duty.” The officer doesn’t look up from the old copy of Paris Match. “You’re late,” he says and you have no idea if he’s right or not since the room has no clock and your watch was stolen last week. The officer doesn’t seem too concerned and throws down the Paris Match in disgust before scribbling something on the clipboard. You see the cover. It’s a pre-election issue.

Do not fidget your feet like that.

“That bastard Mitterrand,” the officer mumbles as he stands up. He keeps talking while unlocking a big metal door behind him before stepping. “Don’t like him myself. Looks too much like Nixon for me.” Look around the sparse old room and feel a twinge of happiness that you aren’t spending your night in here, suffocating in a cloud of cigarette smoke with no one talk to but a lonely little radio that never lets you get a word in. “But,” his voice comes closer and the officer emerges with a rifle in one hand and magazines in the other, “If he’s no Giscard then I can sleep at night.” The ammunition thuds onto the table as you take the gun. “And I’ve been sleeping like a baby the past ten years!” He laughs loudly. The cold, dark weight of the MAS semi-automatic rifle settles in your arms. You don’t say anything and there’s an awkward, dumb smile on your face. The officer hands you the magazines and lights a cigarette. “Now get out of here before you tell me you’re a Gaullist.” You walk back out into the French night leaving him to read of celebrity whores who mingle with stoned royalty and old scandals that will get the bored officer through the night.

Disappear from there.

And so you are left alone in the night, with only your rifle to keep your company. Heading for the perimeter you pass the parade grounds and football pitch and walk alongside the vast, hulking buildings which serve functions as vague as the grey buildings themselves. You walk and you walk, finding your way across earth that seems to groan under the weight of another pair of boots. When you look back, you can see a few flickering lights from the base. They send out a message in Morse code: you are a pawn. And the lights are right. You know you are a pawn because you are young and carrying a rifle you never asked for, wearing a uniform that never impressed you, guarding bombs just like those aimed at you and everything you love, somewhere out there in the darkness behind a curtain of iron.

Go.

You walk and you think, forgetting how to clean your rifle. You forget firing procedures for the rockets you are trained to deploy, hand-to-hand countermeasures and parade uniform specifications. You remember small things; the eternal hum of the highway infiltrating your room back home. What it’s like to shower alone for as long as you like. Recall the smell of candles and the feel of listening to records alone. When you are left with the seething earth, teeming with life conceived and baptized by May rain, these things come back to you. You remember, you forget- memory and history churn and left alone with the wilderness, the generals and poets who pried their glory from this land all seem so close. Madmen and saints lived here, breathing this air before lying down to die. On this night, you walk alongside the perimeter fence and look out into the greenery clamouring against the fence, alone and untouched by the world beyond your thoughts.

You walk slowly, passively.

Inevitably, as you plod through the hours, your mind turns again to the unspoken reality unfolding behind the obvious. As you do so often lately, you remember the whole thing. The five million, seven hundred thousand troops of the Warsaw pact, ready to spill over the border between the free world and the communist. The wave of young Soviets, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, Romanians, Bulgarians and Albanians ready to dance the sordid dance for international supremacy with you as their partner. Twelve thousand aircraft with names like Fulcrum, Foxbat and Bear. Sixty thousand tanks supported by two hundred and fifty eight submarines, two hundred and seven battleships and two thousand three hundred and forty eight intercontinental ballistic missiles with the coup de grace in the nine thousand nuclear warheads ready to be equipped at any time. The night bristles with cold weapons you cannot see; all eager to be unleashed. You think of the five million, two hundred thousand troops at your back. It will be you who break the tide of men pushing through West Germany and into France if and when the Soviets come.

This is your fate.

This is your fate because you have been conscripted to fight a war for something that is difficult to articulate. You are young and this is what your nation wishes for you. It is why you didn’t vote and you think of what someone in your unit said. ‘If you cock a rifle, you should drop a ballot.’ But you never particularly cared for whatever it was those crumpled men promised or claimed to stand for. If one was for peace, you would still be standing alongside these one thousand, six hundred and forty six intercontinental missiles that would land on St. Petersburg and Dresden. If the death sentence was eliminated, fifteen thousand nuclear warheads would still succeed in finding their targets. If one man lowered taxes and the other expanded social services, twenty five thousand tanks would be ready along with the three hundred and sixty eight battleships, the eleven thousand, nine hundred fighter aircraft and two hundred and twenty four submarines. These are the numbers and you are the blood. This is the steel and you are the flesh.

You want a cigarette.

You don’t smoke but the action has always come naturally to you and your fingers dance eagerly over the rich wooden surface of your rifle. It sits there reflecting moonlight like a nocturnal snake sunning itself. The MAS weighs down, dozing but always ready for the touch of human hands. You are far from the base. Out here, the rifle has as much presence as a person. Son of man, brother to the musket and cousin to the blade, it comforts you and breathes on a frequency noticeable only in your veins beneath the noise of crickets and flutter of bats. Walk on. Look at the dew glistening on your boots. Let it remind you of how you adore making love in summer heat, with each tiny detail of physical geography glistening from the beads of sweat, everything shimmering and flowing into each other, heaving gracefully with

Freeze.

Something moved in the bushes beside you. There is a small cleared stretch of grass between the fence and bush where something is definitely moving. It could be a racoon. It might be a skunk. It could be a rabbit. It might be a fox. It could be a wolf. It may be a mouse being caught. It could be all of these, all at once. Do not fight the terror flooding in. Let your heart race. Allow your mind to be swamped by the deluge of thoughts. Yes, accept it as the sound grows louder and nearer. It could be a farmer. Its kids fooling around, it’s a lost dog or stray cat. Stay frozen, overwhelmed by potential responses overwhelm. Shiver. Wonder if the heat growing in your groin is the feel of urine running down your legs but don’t look down. Notice the lack of barbed wire on the four meter fence. It could be an AWOL soldier trying to creep back in, a Soviet spy, a saboteur. The formless mass is about to break through the bushes. It could be an extraterrestrial. A phantom. A Mayan priest. An angel ablaze and dancing in the night, even though you see no light. Did you leave your flashlight in the barracks? Who was on the cover of that Paris Match? What do you do?

Lift your rifle.



Remember your training and ignore it. Do not move to one knee. Do not yell ‘Halte! Mains ver haute! Forces Francais!’ Simply strain your eyes against the dark. Try to yell ‘arretee’ but find your throat dry and tongue parched instead. The words don’t matter. Whatever it is, it is lumbering towards you evenly and without hurry. It is mumbling. It has a head and hands. You see a zipper or button catch the glow of the base’s faraway lights. You don’t know what to do when you yell out stop and it just keeps drawing near. Is it mute? Yell once again to stop. Watch as it moves towards the fence and let the answer come to you. Welcome it like a message carried by a late runner or an epiphany from God himself. Feel the purity of its logic wash over you. Sing it, exalt it, pray it and roar it. Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! On the count of three, go through the motions your instructors taught you. Charge the gun with your right hand and bring a bullet into the chamber. Bring the rifle back to your shoulder. Push the safety off. Put your index finger to the trigger. Aim.

One.

They are close now, six meters.

Two.

Five and a half meters.

Three.

Pull your finger toward you.

Hear the sharp yet surprisingly quiet yelp of the rifle. Feel the explosion of force sending it back into your shoulder. Keep your grip on the rifle tight. When the gun is calm, pull your finger back again. Sense it all again and hear a desperate, reckless cry of pain fill the silence of the night. Lower the rifle. Look at the mass lying just outside the fence. Walk towards the fence and put your left hand onto it. Grip the chain link and peer through the spaces. You can see them now. It’s a man in civilian clothes. There is a gym bag beside him. There is a mess of devastated cloth in the middle of his chest and another just below his neck. He is lying on his side facing you. His eyes flutter as they look up at the sky. You cannot make out the details of his face. Dread and relief are suddenly all that is left in you. Shoulder the rifle and stare through the fence. There is no way to tell time as you stand there, with a body before you. At last the moon emerges from behind the clouds and you can see the entire scene in clear white light. His mouth moves silently, chest rising ever so slightly as life leaves him. The grass gently laps up the blood and his eyes are half closed. You are numb. A narcosis has taken ahold and so you stand and stand and stand. Finally, you stir. You need to report this.

You must move.

Turn slowly. The Marne soil drinks deep from the pools of crimson. It is a long way back. Take a step. A single step. There. You’ve taken one, now take another. Start the journey. It’s a long way back and once more the French night wraps cool spring fingers around you.