Conceived in Liberty (8 page)

Then a little man pushed the officer aside, crowded him out of the doorway. The little man wore a long grey apron, splattered with blood. He wore spectacles, and he was clean-shaven, his thin hair gathered in a neat bun at the back of his head. He had a long, thin nose and remarkably full red lips.

“What's this?” he demanded. “A sick man out there, Murgot?”

“The hospital's full.”

“You'll keep your God-damn nose out of my hospital. Bring him in.”

I could see the officer trying to face down the little man. The doctor ignored him, turned his back and walked into the hospital. We carried Vandeer in. The place was a log cabin, thirty feet long at the most, but there must have been more than a hundred men in it. They lay close together on beds built the length of the place.

Some of them slept; most of them moved restlessly, the place was cold. There was a continual groaning; after a while, you ignored that.

“We're a little crowded,” the doctor said briskly. “They come and go. About even. We're no warmer here than good mother earth.” He led us to a tiny place in the back, partitioned off, and he motioned for us to lay Vandeer down on the bed. We put him down and unwrapped his coverings. There was a small iron heater there. We crowded close to it.

“Filth—my God, it's a wonder to me there's any of you left. Filth, filth—why don't you shave off those beards? Let's have a look at him. Tell me about it.”

Ely told him—slow, hard words as he brought the scene back to mind.

“I know—I know,” the doctor nodded, before Ely was through. “I know, men go mad. Well, there's no cure I know of for that. What can you expect? It's a wonder to me there's a sane person left here. If there is, I'm the one. I won't be that way long. What do you expect? Can I breathe reason back to him? Am I God?”

The Jew said, softly: “You're God. You see, all of us—we're God. We have to believe that, in the God in us. The nearer we go to the beasts, the more we have to believe. I've starved before. I've seen two thousand men die as they walked to Siberia. You have to believe in man in God. You lose your fear of death; you fear only that the God will go out of you.”

The doctor took off his spectacles, wiped them on his apron. “Who are you?” he asked the Jew—in Dutch.

“He's a Jew heathen out of Poland,” I said.

“You read Spinoza?” the doctor asked him.

“You'll let him die?” He pointed to Clark.

“All right—give me that basin.” Ely held it. The doctor bared Clark's arm, whistled softly at the way the veins showed through. He took a piece of cloth and washed the arm as well as he could. He grumbled: “Can't bathe—give me a hell hole of an icehouse and call it a hospital. I'm as filthy as you—nice on top, but just as filthy underneath.” He picked a tiny object from Vandeer's arm. “See that? Lice—all of you lousy with them. What can you expect?”

He took a lancet and opened a vein in Clark's arm. Then he held out the arm, so that the blood drained into a basin slowly. The blood was dull red. The way it came, so slowly, made me think there was little enough left in Clark. The doctor asked Ely:

“How long since he's eaten?”

“We haven't eaten in three days—any of us.”

The doctor whistled again.

“He's weak—he'll bleed to death,” Ely said.

“What can I do? I'm not God, in spite of your Jew here. I'll bleed him until his reason comes back. He'd die anyway.”

We stood there, grouped round the bed, fascinated by the blood welling out of Clark's arm. Clark began to speak. He asked for Ely. Expertly, the doctor stopped the flow of blood. He pinched the vein together with his fingers, and then quickly bound it over with cloth.

“I'm here, Clark,” Ely said.

“Where's Jacob?”

“He was broke by yer words. He had no strength to come. We bore you to the hospital, Clark.”

“Who came?”

“Allen and the Jew.”

“A great load. Allen's loaded with the blackness of his sin. You'll plead him to give up the wench, Ely?”

Ely didn't answer.

“You'll plead him, Ely!” Clark cried. “I'm a dying man.”

Ely nodded. I said: “Clark—you're putting a dreadful black curse on me. I love her.”

“Promise me, Allen!”

I shook my head.

Then he closed his eyes. Ely turned away.

“Let him sleep,” the doctor said. “Come with me.”

We went into a room in back. He had a table there, a bed, and a heat box. The coals in it were dying. He put a wooden plate on the table, took out a pot with a few slices of cold meat in it.

“We don't have much——”

I yearned toward the meat. Ely didn't move. The Jew was smiling sadly.

“That won't feed the army,” Ely said.

“Don't be noble,” the doctor told him. “It will feed you.” Then he saw the Jew's smile. “You can go to hell,” the doctor said. “You're a filthy pack of beggars. It's a wonder if the English lay hands on your filth to swing you from their gibbets.”

We stood there.

“Drink some rum,” he said. He poured three small cups. “Drink it, or by God, you'll die before you reach your quarters.”

The rum warmed us up, but made us dizzy. We stood there, sucking in the heat and the comfort of the rum burning our insides. The doctor was sitting on his chair, regarding us as if we were some curious specimens he had picked up.

“You and me,” the doctor said, speaking to the Jew and in Dutch, “we're the only civilized men here. You and me—in a land of savages, of filth and ignorance and superstition. They know one thing. They want to be free to cheat themselves and kill each other. They want to be free of the English. They want to be free to cheat and lie and hate. They want to be free to plunge a land into ignorance and misery. I'm here because I'm a fool. But why you?”

The Jew shrugged.

“You came with a great dream of a land for your kind.”

“A land for all men.”

“It's big enough. But men are the same—here or Europe. If they win—and they won't—but if they win, they'll drive you out. You're a Jew, a heathen.”

“They won't drive us out,” the Jew said softly. “We've come the length of the world——”

“Driven!”

“No—we've come here. We've come for a dream of a place for all men. This is a new world. The day of the old world is over. A long time—maybe two hundred, maybe three hundred years. But it will make the men who live in it. This is only the beginning. This army is nothing—nothing, only a dream. Do you understand? The army goes; the dream never goes. I stayed at the home of a man in Philadelphia who is making this revolution. His name's Haym Solomon. He came out of Poland too. Poland was a school for us. Poland will go on fighting, but Poland won't be free. A school. Here's the land for the dream of God in man.”

The doctor glanced at us. “Not a clean god. Come and talk again. Man can't live by bread alone or without it. No bread. I won't last the winter. If you make your land, tell your children about a man of science who wouldn't believe. Damn lies!”

We went back to Clark. He was still sleeping. His face, where it showed through his beard, was white as snow.

“Will he live?” Ely asked.

“How do I know?” the doctor snapped. Then: “It doesn't make any difference. He won't be far from any of you.”

We take the clothes that Clark was wrapped in, two coats and a petticoat. I give a coat to Ely and the other to the Jew. I wrap the petticoat round my neck and face.

We go out, and the cold hits us in the face, like knives ripping. Out of some forlorn curiosity, I spit on my sleeve. The others see me, and watch fascinated. I count, only once, and then the little balls of spittle snap with the frost.

“My God,” Ely whispers.

We have never known such cold as this. Ely has been to Canada. I have been, in winter, in the highlands of the upper Hudson. I have seen bitter cold weather, but never such cold as this. Neither has Ely. It is a cold that has come on the face of a planet stripped bare of all protection. It is a cold living and malignant. It is a cold that has become a force to destroy soul and body. In all the memory of men in America, there has never been such cold.

We go on slowly, forcing our way through snow that is like dry sand. We move a step at a time, bringing one foot up to the place where the other has been. It is night already, no moon, but stars that glitter like bright jewels. The snow is a sheet of white—no sentries, no living thing except ourselves.

To go back to the Pennsylvania dugouts, we must climb a hill—not very high, no more than two hundred feet. But the hill is the difference between life and death. The hill is a slope that leads to hell. We make a step, stumble, and slide back two. We roll over in the snow, feel it slide into every crevice of our clothes. We spit it out, and our lips freeze and go numb. We stand up and go on.

I don't think any more. My mind is gone. Only my body moves, and my body is a machine apart from me. It will go on until the spark of life in it flickers out.

I turn round once, and the Jew is lying in the snow. He doesn't move. Ely calls to me, but his words are lost in the rush of wind. I stand above them and watch Ely go back to the Jew. Suddenly, my mind comes alive. I think to myself, ten steps down, ten steps back. I keep thinking that—ten steps down and ten steps back. The words rush in my mind. I begin to cry, and the tears freeze on my lids.

I go down to Ely. The Jew says: “Leave me. They'll find me soon.”

We help him up, and the three of us go on together. We go on into endless night and endless distance. I lose all conception of time and all conception of movement. Someone must be leading us.

Then we are at the dugout. We drop on the floor. The Jew is senseless. Ely stares at the fire with wide, terrible eyes. I cry bitterly.

Bess is rubbing my hands, kissing me, trying to work the cold out of my limbs. She drags me toward the fire. I hear, as from far away, Ely telling Jacob of Clark.

Then I am in bed, and Bess is trying to warm me. I know how little strength she has, and I wonder how she can work so desperately. But the cold won't leave me. I tremble and my lips flutter. My lips are broken and bleeding.

She says: “Rest—rest, my darling.”

I feel for her warm face, for her hands, for her breast. I want life desperately. I cling to her for the sense of life.

Then I sleep.

I wake out of my dream, and speak with it: “Clark put a curse on me—he's dying. I should drive you away. He made me promise.”

Her cry of terror was the most terrible thing I had ever heard.

I try to soothe her. I whisper: “No—I was dreaming.”

But she lies there, awake, and I can feel her fear of the cold night, of being away from me.

VI

W
E KEEP
alive. Days pass, and days slide into one another, days and nights mingling to form a grey. But we keep alive. A strange knowledge comes to me, a knowledge of the strength in men. I can see how layer after layer of life may be taken from a man; take all the strength that is any man's, and still there is strength underneath.

So we keep alive. How many days pass, I don't know. A new man is in the dugout. His name is Meyer Smith, and he was an innkeeper in Philadelphia once. The Jew is sick. We think of Moss Fuller. The Jew has the same racking cough.

Ely said: “A bite of frost. His lungs are frozen. Maybe in the place he calls Siberia. When a man's lungs are frozen, they never heal.”

We sit round now trying not to notice that hacking, incessant cough. When we look at the Jew's face, the bony features rising out of the shadow of his bunk, we are forced to think of something we don't want to remember.

“I call to mind Christ was a Jew,” Jacob said—strange words for Jacob.

The Jew's name is Aaron Levy. We are very tender with him. With us, it is different: we are born and bred to the land. But the Jew has come great, shadowy distances. The distances keep us away from him, and he is alone. His loneliness oppresses us. In his sleep, he talks in a language we don't understand.

Smith was in the dugout two days when he learnt that Levy was a Jew. He said:

“I'll not sleep with a bloody Jew. I'll not sleep with any Christ-killing bitch.”

Jacob almost throttled him. We had to tear Jacob away, and the marks of Jacob's fingers were on Smith's throat for a week after. Jacob pleaded with us to let him go to let him kill Smith. Jacob cried:

“His death won't sit with me. I've seen too many better than he go.”

Smith was afraid. He leaped for the gunrack, tore out a musket and faced Jacob. “I'll kill you!” he screamed. “Stay off! I'll kill any man who lays a hand on me.”

Ely walked up to him and wrenched the musket from his hands. “You're a low, bitter creature,” Ely said quietly.

Smith crawled into his bunk and lay the rest of that night in silence. We pitied him; we were beyond hate. I could see the madness coming in Jacob, in myself, in Smith, in Henry Lane. I began to fear Ely's death. One day, I pleaded with him not to die; I pleaded with him hysterically. We lived in him. Ely smiled; he was the only one who could still smile.

Now we sit and talk a little. Bess crouches by my side, her hands touching me, feeling for me always. They tell me that when I go out on sentry duty, she lives in an agony of fear.

“You'll go out once—and not come back,” she told me.

“There are other men.”

“No other man,” she said.

She sits by me now. We talk of the British attack and what holds it. We are all of us here but Kenton, who is on sentry duty.

“There'll be no attack,” I say. “The war's over. In two months, there'll be no army. Why should they attack?”

“Ye're wrong, Allen,” Ely says.