فصل سی و دوم

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

No Man’s Land

The Gunners face lay on its side, one eye in the water, one eye staring unblinking out at the night and the thin layer of ground mist rising off the grass in the park. There was no question of his ever moving again, but he was still—just—thinking. And because he was thinking at the very edge of his energy, the thoughts were not the thoughts of his time as a statue, of what, as a spit, he had endured and seen of life and London. They were the first thoughts, the spit-thoughts, the idea of him that the sculptor had put into him as he was made. And because the sculptor had not only been a maker of statues, but a soldier himself, the thoughts that the Gunner had came to him like memories of a life lived, a life in the war.

He no longer thought he was in St. James’s Park. He couldn’t hear the distant growl of traffic. He heard guns rumbling in a rolling barrage, far away. And closer, he heard the flat crack and slap of rifles firing overhead in random counterpoint to the mechanical stutter of machine guns. He heard men shouting orders, he heard other men screaming for their mothers. He heard feet rushing past, he heard the crack-thump of a grenade and fewer people screaming after that.

He focused on the gouged mud inches in front of his eye.

He knew where he was.

I’m in No Man’s Land, he thought. And no bloody man’s going to come out here to get me.

And no man did exactly that.

Shapes moved in the mist beyond the mud. A tall figure in a flapping mackintosh and a tin hat just like his walked toward him out of the haze. He saw the man’s boots squish the mud in front of his nose. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He heard a snap of concern as someone sucked their teeth in frustration.

Then he felt himself hoisted in the air—high in the air, rising toward the sky—and he knew it was over, and the eye not clogged with mud stayed open, but stopped seeing anything.