Dog Tags (2 page)

Benny the paragon sat alone, lost straggler from a lost platoon, much aware that he was in Central Europe, that a coachman bearing letters for Herr L. van B. might have paused at this very inn for rest and refreshment. He sipped at the hot tea. He prayed for strudel and none came. The fire rose; he unwound his scarf. Jacob believed in scarfs, which he called mufflers, and on a January morning little of Jacob was visible: between the fur hat and the muffler, two sharp eyes, one sharp nose. Forty years of tailoring and eyes like an eagle (iggle, really, but Jacob invested a New York Yiddish accent with royal resonances): “Aiees laika niggle,” he said, “and do you know why? Because I make a point to alter the focus. Frequently. I look at a star. Or Jersey. And never never look into the sun. Alter the focus. Similarly the nose, the tongue. Once a week, Italian food. And,” this impish old man, “a good grade of cigar helps, and moderation in intercourse. Every man can live to be a hundred.”

Strudel failing, Benny prayed for a good cigar; none came. Reviving nonetheless, he rose to be a soldier, to inspect his perimeter before eating and sleeping. Through cloudy windows he reconnoitered the road. It entered the village from the northwest and curved off to the east. The last light faded. It was so quiet, as Jacob said, you could drop a pin. He was about to turn, to leave his fate in the lap of the gods (or the Hitlers and Stalins and Roosevelts), when his eye caught a flash of white, and an explosion of fear stopped his breath. He dashed for his rifle and pressed the safety, and crouched like a lover in the flickering firelight, hot and stupendous.

The man, the creature, the moving object, approached from the east. It proceeded by jerks and lurches, like a marionette. Puzzled, elementally perturbed, abruptly at the edge of tears, enraged, Benny pressed the safety back and set his rifle against the cold stone wall.

The creature approached in zigzags and staggers. It wore a clown's suit, horizontal stripes. It was bald, shoeless and tiny, a child of nightmare. It stumbled to its knees and seemed to sleep; fell forward; lay flat. One star twinkled.

Benny stepped outside, peered left and right, and went to fetch it. He saw that it was a man, and picked it up. It weighed little more than a full field pack. Benny toted the man inside and placed him before the fire. The bald head gleamed like old ivory, yellowing. Frozen snot crusted the nose and lips. Gently Benny wiped it away. The feet were icy. Benny's ear found a heartbeat. He removed his jacket and smoothed it over the body. He wrapped the feet in his scarf. He broke up another chair and stoked the fire. He chafed the wrists; when ladies in novels fainted, wrists were chafed. He rubbed the body like a masseur. A more conscientious warrior would have owned a blanket, but Benny had tea bags and sugar, and was sorry now. He chafed the wrists again, and the forearms, and in the firelight he saw the tag on the breast of the suit: 57359.

The man remained alive. Benny quit rubbing after a time and sat back against the stone fireplace. He was hungry but had only the one ration. Perhaps the man was dying. Those photographs. The survivors in striped hats, haunted. Huge eyes. The angel of death would come, and would be at home here. He would stride in like a knight, but only bones, a cheerful smile on his death's-head, and would stand before the fire, snobbish, wearily elegant, jaded, leaning on his pike. “Be off,” Benny said aloud. The angel nodded coldly and passed along.

Nature called; Benny stepped once more outside, this time to make the village his own. The barest gleam of firelight followed him. The village was a bad dream and Benny was weary. He stood with his back to the breeze and pissed on Germany. Steam rose dimly, and two Bennys smiled in rue, sad and strange: half of him was named Hansi, illiterate, passed water in the road, loved the Saxon wench, chaffed the scholar, paid the host, sat unbathed at the oaken board and gobbled pork; the other half lay unconscious before the fire and might not see another dawn.

He buttoned up and returned to the little man, who had not stirred: only the bare rise and fall of the sunken breast. He smelled the man's barracks and saw him eating garbage. The fat guards with tiny eyes and no lips. The commandant, a fantasy from the cinema, ranting in Teutonic English.

So. Now it had to be comprehended, a little at least. The camps were not off in Atlantis, with robed officials waiting gravely to set wrongs right. Benny Beer had prayed for strudel and cigars and had been sent this mummy. Benny Beer who could eat eight stuffed cabbage leaves at a sitting; who had perfect pitch; who had pleased Irene S—four times between eleven and one, and under a stairway at that; who was a corporal, by God. And now this. This wee criminal. A Jew? A politician? A traffic ticket? In this insane country how could you know?

Benny rubbed the man's hands and feet, and sipped tea, and thought upon life and death and heaven and hell.

Later the man groaned, a birdlike exhalation, and licked his lips, and heaved a sigh, and slept. So did Benny, but lightly.

When Benny awoke, the little man was struggling to rise: on all fours, swaying, straining, staring. He hissed in horror, and wept.

“It's all right,” Benny said, moved, unmoving. “Kamerad. American. Amerikanisch.”

57359's lips formed words, uttered no sound. Benny stood up, and the little man contracted, and showed his rotting teeth. His ears were like wings.

“It's all right,” Benny said. “Frei. Frei. Du bist frei.” The little man grimaced like a cat. “Look.” Benny pointed. “A fire. Feuer. Essen. Trinken.” Warily the man turned to see. His eyes were tremendous, Egyptian eyes, doe's eyes in a mouse's face. He dragged a knee toward the fire, slipped sidewise; he sat facing the flame like a baby, legs apart, back hunched, hands limp between his legs.

Benny showed him the rations, the canteen cup. He filled the cup again and set it in the flames. He offered the canteen. It fell from the man's hands. Benny knelt beside him and tilted it up. The man compressed his lips and shook his head. Benny sat back, bewildered, almost angry. The little fellow's claw picked out the helmet, the scarf; Benny passed them along. A whisper: “Bitte.” 57359 slipped the helmet comically over his bald head and draped the scarf upon his shoulders. He peered about him like a child and then spoke aloud. He murmured and muttered and rocked and nodded. He was thanking God and not Benny. Benny looked away.

The little fellow pinched him. Benny gave him the canteen, and he drank deep. Benny withdrew the canteen and said, like a concertmaster, “Langsam.” He opened the tin and shaved a slice from the cylinder of cheese. Slice by slice he fed his charge.

“Wasser.”

Benny obliged, and pointed to the cup: “Tea.”

“Tee.” 57359 tried to smile and Benny's heart cracked.

He fetched socks from his pack and slipped them onto the tiny feet, cursing that he had not thought of them sooner. He shaved more cheese. There were bits of bacon in the cheese. Meat and milk and not only meat but bacon. Well. The Messiah would come a day later.

57359, this newborn mouse, sipping tea, wept as if thawing. His tears gleamed like quicksilver, welled from the huge eyes and flowed beside the huge nose, dribbled from the little round chin. Fascinated, Benny crooned encouragement, recalled formalities: “Benny Beer,” he said. “Benjamin Beer. Benyamin Bear. Ich bin Benyamin Bear.” The survivor stuttered nods, swallowed, sighed, shook his head, pursed his lips, looked Benny in the eye and shrugged. Benny recognized the shrug: what difference can a little war make, or a little century, or a little death? A Goliath of shrugs. A Leviathan of shrugs.

In firelight the wraith licked his lips for forgotten crumbs. His vast brown eyes gleamed, a lunatic affirmation of life, appetite, hope. Again he attacked the tea, slurped, spilled, squeaked his pleasure. He published a thunderous belch.

When the sun rose Isaac gathered up Abraham and they set forth across the plain.

“Wie geht's?” Thus Benny the world traveler.

“Gut.”

Big Ben laughed aloud and trudged on. A milder morn, and spring suddenly possible. In an hour they wandered two miles, three. Benny set down his burden, trotted in place, rubbed his own weary muscles. His mouse sank to the road. Benny hauled him up, hugged him, massaged him, abraded him, mauled and manhandled him; the little man warmed and smiled.

The lone aircraft flew out of the west, low, and Benny assumed it was American. Perhaps it was. When the strafing began he fell upon his friend, who wailed, clutched, scrabbled, strangled—with what secret strength? in what last outraged spasm? Benny choked, and the earth tilted and went dark.

Later that year Benny awoke to dancing ranks of light and the smell of vodka. He strove yet budged not, and decided solemnly that he was alive and upon earth but had lost all four limbs. With that depressing notion he slept again. Ages more, galaxies more, and he sighed, swallowed cotton, opened his eyes; a woman was leaning across him and he embraced her. “Ah non.” She giggled. He had embraced her with one arm. That aroused his curiosity. “Lie still.” A foreign lady. Perhaps he was abroad. Perhaps this was a grand ocean liner. Benny was agog; in his excitement he blinked furiously. “Well well. Hello there.” White jacket. A ship's officer, or a steward. Yes. A steward. “Broth,” Benny said. “You're all right,” the steward said. “You're in Paris, and you'll be all right in time.”

“Paris.” Brackets on a wall; a row of lamps.

“You've had a bad …”

But Benny heard no more for now; he saw the beds, faces, bandages, and a swift illumination shocked him: the village, Jacob, 57359, night and morning. “Ah God. Jacob. Have you told my father?”

“I'm sure he's been told. All's well, my lad.”

All's well, my lad? “These wires.”

“Intravenous feeding. Do you know what that is?”

Benny concentrated. “Am I hurt.”

“Six bullets, shoulder to calf. All out. Smashed shoulder blade. Smashed femur; that's your thighbone.”

“Connected to the kneebone.” Benny quaked; he had made a rare joke.

“Well, yes. And you've quarts of new blood in you.”

“Type O.”

A chuckle. “We know that now.”

“You must not laugh,” Benny said firmly. “Important. On the dog tags.”

“I'm afraid we couldn't find your dog tags.”

“Around my neck. Three two nine three two five two seven.”

“Yes. You rest. We'll talk about that later.”

Benny strained to think, frowned and set his teeth. “My balls,” he said, “and my spinal cord. Sir.”

“All there. Absolutely all right.”

Benny burst into tears, and cried himself to sleep. He woke again at night, the ward silent and shadowed, and he recalled it all immediately, and smiled. “God of Abraham and Isaac,” he said to the dark, to the shadows of his forgotten ancestors, “thou who never wert, I thank you. If you should require assistance in the future I hope you will not hesitate to call upon me.”

“For Christ's sake shut up,” someone said. “We're trying to sleep.”

Benny would doubtless spend six weeks in bed. “I'll need books.” The doctor was jovial: anything, everything. Red wine, in time. Newspapers. La Vie Parisienne. The doctor winked. Benny stared coldly and the doctor became busy.

They brought Benny soldiers' editions of many books and he read the glories of western literature in 12mo., paper-bound. He read Greeks and Russians and Frenchmen and Englishmen. The Armed Forces Edition of the Iliad! He also read French newspapers, four or five a day, most of the political left, each with evil to say of the others, and thought that Jacob would be amused. Barring an ungrateful irascibility he was an exemplary patient, cheerful and calm, aglow and moaning at the passage of nurses. In danger of bedsores he submitted to massage, humming low, eyes shut, drifting nirvanaward on waves of eastern sensuality. Madame Fribourg, Marie-Elisabeth, his witchlike specialist, was aged and bore a tufted wart, but she was all he had of houri, peri, succubus. Sexuality oppressed him; he was in essential respects hale, yet bedridden and fragile. A Mademoiselle Nattier caught his eye, and later his—ah no. Benny's is a story worthy of more than passing fancies.

Still, she was what “Frenchwoman” had always promised: dark, small-featured (something stingy there, mean), busty, her buttocks twitching neatly, symmetrically, metronomically as she walked. Allegro vivo e con amore. She smelled wrong but she loved him: at first, while he was down and out, with subtle touches of hospitality; then, when he was up and coming, with zut and oolala. Benny gave tongue to bleats of joy. His wardmates knew, approved, envied. Finally, the joint triumph of Asclepius and Eros: standing up. The leg held. All this behind curtains, in linen closets, twixt lights-out and cock-crow. She improved her English: “Am I ready to be occupied by the Americans?” “Oh yes,” Benny said with fervor, “oh yes.” He remembered her always with pleasure and pride; years later she stirred him still, though they knew nothing of each other but flesh. Though? Perhaps because.

He wished he could forget Captain Parsons. This one came marching in one day with two lieutenants prissing along behind him, all three identical, painted by number, and they brisked a few wooden chairs Benny's way and perused his chart with earnest, forthright, wholesome menace. Having learned his name, rank, serial number, age, height, weight, religion, ailments, output of urine and talent for bowel movements, they sat down and one of them asked, “Corporal Benjamin Beer?”

They were summer fools but they were
they, them
, the eternal faceless functionary, and Benny's first thought was that they brought bad news about Jacob; but he revised that at once, realizing in a paroxysm of joy that he was about to be given a medal. “Yes. That's me. Three two nine three two five two seven.”

“Hmm,” the captain said. The lieutenants apparently agreed. “My name is Parsons,” the captain went on, “and this is Pistol and Bardolph.” He did not really say that, but no man is expected to retain the names of lieutenants once the peace is signed. “We have to talk to you about a matter that may be rather delicate, and you are to consider that Lieutenant Pistol represents you.”