before him, and he himself appeared, lying on a damp horsehair blanket the day before the twelfth offensive, reading her letter and feeling the inevitableness of it rising tidelike under him: He has done the most bastard thing . The most hateful. The most selfish. The worst, only thing left my dear little boy . . . And on and on in tight blank circles without meaning, not sparing him anything, every detail of that day down to the arrangement of the papers on the writing table, the cane-backed chair thrown down onto the floor, the tipped-over inkwell. And he thinking to himself in that first instant She’s made poetry out of this, out of this thing, too . . . The boy in the upper bunk was leaning out into the crawl space and looking down at him, half smiling, curious.
— What is it, Voxlauer?
He hadn’t moved or spoken, but gathered in his breath, weakly and raspingly, with a sound like a brush passing over a leather strap: Ahhh. Ahh
— Voxlauer? Hey?
— What?
—You made a noise.
—Yes.
—What is it?
—It’s my father.
—What?
—He’s shot himself. Ahh. He’s shot himself, do you hear
Then a silence, blanketing and deep.
— Oskar?
—Ahhhh, said Voxlauer aloud, listening to the sound give out into the cold.
He rose and worked the mattress with the poker until the smell again made it difficult to breathe. He crossed the room to the door and caught his breath and returned to the mattress. When he had finished he hung the lantern from a hook above the door and went outside to the woodpile and brought in six quartered logs and an armful of kindling. Taking a broom and a dustpan from under the bench, he swept up the loose straw and emptied it into the stove mouth. The stove itself was thick with ash but he had no strength left to clean it. He laid on the kindling and the splints and started a fire and opened the stove vents. Then he spread his coat over the sour-smelling mattress and slept.
That night the hussars gave me a coat and a felt blanket and sat me among them round the fire. The images of my father as I imagined him, and the taps sergeant and the deserter, mixed and separated again until I couldn’t think of any one of them without the other two crowding in behind. There was no difference, finally, between them: all three had died. They had each died badly and I’d had a part in their deaths and I had come away alive. The knowledge of this made me feel ghostlike and transparent and I wondered that no one around the fire seemed to notice. I had been solid and fully in my body before shooting the deserter but he had died very badly, slowly and in great pain, and I hadn’t been able to fire a second time. Once he’d died and I knew that I was safe I’d been able to step away from the fact of myself a little and not think, only follow the hussars back to the tents. But now night had fallen and I was still not back in my body properly and in fact was trapped outside of it as the rest of them drank and cursed their superior officers and gossiped about the war.
They were a young regiment, excepting some of the officers, and a few of them were from Kärnten. One boy in particular, Alban I think his name was, was kind to me and shared a dram of watery schnapps and a little flake of chocolate. I found that in spite of what was happening I could drink and eat and talk to him very amiably. We exchanged addresses and promised we’d meet at the Niessener Hof for a drink sometime after the war, and he found me a bedroll and a coat and space in a tent with three other enlisted men. The captain came round a short time later and promised to have me restored to my company by six-o’clock the following evening. The front’s moved on some eighteen-odd miles, he said. We took Caporetto this morning in less than an hour. He was standing over me at the opening of the tent and speaking evenly and unexcitedly with the clear starry sky behind him. Appreciative murmurs rose up from the others. That’s good, I
— What is it, Voxlauer?
He hadn’t moved or spoken, but gathered in his breath, weakly and raspingly, with a sound like a brush passing over a leather strap: Ahhh. Ahh
— Voxlauer? Hey?
— What?
—You made a noise.
—Yes.
—What is it?
—It’s my father.
—What?
—He’s shot himself. Ahh. He’s shot himself, do you hear
Then a silence, blanketing and deep.
— Oskar?
—Ahhhh, said Voxlauer aloud, listening to the sound give out into the cold.
He rose and worked the mattress with the poker until the smell again made it difficult to breathe. He crossed the room to the door and caught his breath and returned to the mattress. When he had finished he hung the lantern from a hook above the door and went outside to the woodpile and brought in six quartered logs and an armful of kindling. Taking a broom and a dustpan from under the bench, he swept up the loose straw and emptied it into the stove mouth. The stove itself was thick with ash but he had no strength left to clean it. He laid on the kindling and the splints and started a fire and opened the stove vents. Then he spread his coat over the sour-smelling mattress and slept.
That night the hussars gave me a coat and a felt blanket and sat me among them round the fire. The images of my father as I imagined him, and the taps sergeant and the deserter, mixed and separated again until I couldn’t think of any one of them without the other two crowding in behind. There was no difference, finally, between them: all three had died. They had each died badly and I’d had a part in their deaths and I had come away alive. The knowledge of this made me feel ghostlike and transparent and I wondered that no one around the fire seemed to notice. I had been solid and fully in my body before shooting the deserter but he had died very badly, slowly and in great pain, and I hadn’t been able to fire a second time. Once he’d died and I knew that I was safe I’d been able to step away from the fact of myself a little and not think, only follow the hussars back to the tents. But now night had fallen and I was still not back in my body properly and in fact was trapped outside of it as the rest of them drank and cursed their superior officers and gossiped about the war.
They were a young regiment, excepting some of the officers, and a few of them were from Kärnten. One boy in particular, Alban I think his name was, was kind to me and shared a dram of watery schnapps and a little flake of chocolate. I found that in spite of what was happening I could drink and eat and talk to him very amiably. We exchanged addresses and promised we’d meet at the Niessener Hof for a drink sometime after the war, and he found me a bedroll and a coat and space in a tent with three other enlisted men. The captain came round a short time later and promised to have me restored to my company by six-o’clock the following evening. The front’s moved on some eighteen-odd miles, he said. We took Caporetto this morning in less than an hour. He was standing over me at the opening of the tent and speaking evenly and unexcitedly with the clear starry sky behind him. Appreciative murmurs rose up from the others. That’s good, I
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