Wars I Have Seen (3 page)

So then between babyhood and fourteen there are all these things, and romantic war with them, not to believe in but to dream.

Between babyhood and fourteen there was frequent change of scene. Modern wars all wars are like that, they go places, where they never heard of in many cases, and between babyhood and fourteen there had been so many changes of scene. And different ways of traveling about, and that also is like war. Just now all the young men of France have to go, they do not know where, some of them run away and when they run away they do not know where and a great many of them are taken away they do not know where and this is all as it was between babyhood and fourteen. Europe and America and railroad and water and stage coach and walking and horse back and in every there was no astonishment and that is the way war is.

I remember being very worried in reading, if anybody in the book died and did not have children because then nobody in that family could be living yet, and if they were not living yet how could they hear what was happening. This always bothered me from that time on until just now and now well now it does seem
that the future is not important any more, the world has become so shrunken and it will never be different and so it does not mean much and there is no love interest, it is mostly parents who suffer, perhaps it was like that between babyhood and fourteen.

Dear Life life is strife Claribel used to say, but she did say dear life and in any way it is and she did say life is strife but is it.

It was all that between babyhood and fourteen, and it was the nineteenth century between babyhood and fourteen and the nineteenth century dies hard all centuries do that is why the last war to kill it is so long, it is still being killed now in 1942, the nineteenth century just as the eighteenth century took from the revolution to 1840 to kill, so the nineteenth century is taking from 1914 to 1943 to kill. It is hard to kill a century almost impossible, as was the old joke about mothers-in-law, and centuries get to be like that they get to be wearing like a mother-in-law. So as I was saying from babyhood to fourteen and of course longer much longer it was the nineteenth century and the wars civil domestic and foreign were nineteenth century wars, naturally enough.

Saint George and the Dragon, Siegfried and the dragon, anybody and the dragon, the dragon is always the century any century that anybody is trying to kill, and the worst of it all is that the one that says he is trying to kill the century that has to be killed is the last piece of the century that has to be killed and often the most long-lived, such as a Napoleon a Hitler or a Julius Cæsar the century has to be killed and they are the embodiment the most persistent end of it they are to live while really in its being killed they have to go, only nobody does tell them so, nobody and so they never do know, never do know.

However when I was a baby and then on to fourteen, the nineteenth century was full on.

In the nineteenth century, there was reading, there was evolution, there was war and antiwar which was the same thing, and there was eating. Even now I always resent when in a book they say they sat down to a hearty meal and they do not tell just what it was they ate. In the nineteenth century they often did. And in these
days 1943 when eating well actually it is like prohibition one is so certain that one is never going to eat again that one is not greedy but one does eat everything well in these days you would imagine that you would not take pleasure in what the characters in a novel ate when they did eat, but one does enormously, well anyway the nineteenth century, liked to cry liked to try liked to eat liked to pursue evolution and liked war, war and peace peace and war and no more.

When I was then I liked revolutions I liked to eat I liked to eat I liked to cry not in real life but in books in real life there was nothing much to cry about but in books oh dear me, it was wonderful there was so much to cry about and then there was evolution. Evolution was all over my childhood, walks abroad with an evolutionist and the world was full of evolution, biological and botanical evolution, with music as a background for emotion and books as a reality, and a great deal of fresh air as a necessity, and a great deal of eating as an excitement and as an orgy, and now well just then there was no war no actual war anywhere.

In the nineteenth century there was nothing more exciting than climbing a high hill or a mountain and seeing the rain driving across a wide plain or valley with the sun following.

There was nothing more interesting in the nineteenth century than little by little realising the detail of natural selection in insects flowers and birds and butterflies and comparing things and animals and noticing protective coloring nothing more interesting, and this made the nineteenth century what it is, the white man’s burden, the gradual domination of the globe as piece by piece it became known and became all of a piece, and the hope of Esperanto or a universal language. Now they can do the radio in so many languages that nobody any longer dreams of a single language, and there should not any longer be dreams of conquest because the globe is all one, anybody can hear everything and everybody can hear the same thing, so what is the use of conquering, and so the nineteenth century now in ’43 is slowly coming to an end.

Between babyhood and fourteen years, it is hard to know
whether it takes a long time or whether it does not and if it does any part of it is interesting but very little of it is recollecting, very little and so emotion is remembered, a few dimensions, and what is seen and any day.

Some days there are coincidences and some days there are none and when there are coincidences as there are coincidences that does make superstition and at any age, there is the same astonishment and the same belief, and between babyhood and fourteen there were coincidences and astonishment. There are coincidences now yesterday and to-day and to-morrow and then for some time there are none, but any time they are astonishing when they come. It is a long time that there has been no correspondence with America and then some one offered to make one by cablegram and the next day a cablegram came, which is what makes superstition and when you are young very young superstitions are frightening and when you are old quite old superstitions are comforting.

War this war can neglect superstitions the war of 1943 because all the superstitions have been used up used up and passed away, and there is no feeling about having any new one or any old one. Some wars make everybody tired, not many of them, this one makes everybody more tired than most, I think the American civil war made everybody tired but it did not quite exhaust coincidence and superstition but this 1943 one, well in a way yes, and when I was in babyhood to fourteen little by little and all the time there was the excitement of coincidences, and of superstitions, coincidences were more exciting than superstitions in between superstitions were more exciting than coincidences and now again coincidences are not exciting but they are soothing now in 1943.

Everything begins again, now they denounce one another, why nobody knows, just perhaps to make coincidences now that there are no superstitions. Madame Chaboux just told me this one.

There is a woman living in the country, her husband was a farmer, there are more farmers than not. She was not well and she asked a neighbor to come and tend to her, she said she had pneumonia. The neighbor lived with another woman and the husband
of each one of them was a prisoner a war prisoner. Well the one went to see the other, and she saw that the sheets were bloodstained and she said to the woman you have had a miscarriage have you not. And the other said how dare you denounce me. And she said but I did not I just asked to know. Well anyway she went home and about a week after a man in a uniform came and said the two women had to pay a thousand francs for having falsely denounced a neighbor and they said they had not and he said pay, and they paid. And they saw the other woman and she said she would take everything away from them and they all three had husbands who were prisoners and they were frightened and they told Madame Chaboux, her husband had been their doctor and Madame Chaboux told the mayor and he told her to go to the magistrate and she did and the police were pleased because they had always wanted a witness against the man and now they had two, and everybody was pleased and relieved even if they did not get their money back and their neighbor was still their neighbor and all the husbands were still prisoners.

Well between babyhood and fourteen no one could believe any such thing, not in the nineteenth century but now well 1943, what can stop anything since although there are still coincidences they are not, not really any superstitions because there are not. Everybody is too tired to have them even when they get one thousand francs which they do.

Such is war.

Between babyhood and fourteen there is if not everything a great deal there is the suspecting of life and death not being sure of the same but beginning to be doubtful that it might be the same. And there is nature and its evolution and then there is coming home before it is dark in the evening after playing and then there is the beginning of being a legend. One can become a legend any time between babyhood and fourteen and one can one does they do know how it can come to be true that they are a legend. It is easy to become a legend between babyhood and fourteen, and so ever afterwards books can be read, because books are
all about anybody who has become a legend, and I can remember becoming a legend again and again between babyhood and fourteen, and seeing the others between babyhood and fourteen and they can become a legend. They know they can they can become a legend if they have a dog behind them on a bicycle in a basket, they can become a legend, if they hold a flower in each hand, they can become a legend if they had an accident and lost a finger, they can become a legend, if they walk up and down hand in hand, and one eye of one of them is always closed. They can become a legend and they do because a legend any one between babyhood and fourteen does become a legend, a pure legend. Later on the legend is not so pure because you mix yourself up with it but between babyhood and fourteen becoming a legend is just that it is becoming a legend. I can remember becoming a legend, I will tell several of them, several of those becoming legends and what they have to do with war. This war 1943 is not very legendary, that is one of its troubles, it is not like ’14–’18 war and other wars which naturally became legendary. This is more like the beginning of middle living when being legendary does not happen, but as I say between babyhood and fourteen everybody is a legend just anybody, and I was.

Coincidences come to be stronger and stronger between babyhood and fourteen, they replace faith, coincidences are the foundation of games, they are the foundation of faith, coincidences, in between are not so important but from babyhood to fourteen and then again much later, very much later when one is old coincidences are important, they are real, they recreate faith they are not games, but they are the reality that makes a present and a future when perhaps there could not really be any. Take war, in time of war 1943, there have happened so many coincidences and they are always happening little coincidences, nice little coincidences, later on when I tell all about this coincidental war this meaningless war, this war that put an end a real end an entire end to the nineteenth century there were so many coincidences and they were the only reality in this time of unreality. The nineteenth century
called coincidences a law of chance and worked it out but now that the nineteenth century is dead, coincidences are real again, they recreate faith they make a future, and they will make the twentieth century. Everybody, wait and see.

But between babyhood and fourteen, coincidences were only really used as the really necessary basis of games, and what was real then were not coincidences but being a legend and I was, we were.

What makes the legend real between babyhood and fourteen is that there is then the first struggle not to die and the first struggle to help kill the century in which you are born.

It is a struggle not to die between babyhood and fourteen, not not to actually die, that is a matter for parents and nurses and guardians, but the not to know that death is there, and not to share, that is to be secret and not die, and not to not know why, that is what makes any one shy between babyhood and fourteen, and later on there are other things in between, there is eternity, there is or there is not being a king or a queen, but between babyhood and fourteen, beside reading writing and arithmetic, and counting, and games, and coincidences, and hot and cold, one is always either very hot or very cold between babyhood and fourteen.

There is no use in remembering between babyhood and fourteen, actually there was no war then, there might have been but actually there was no war then then when I was between babyhood and fourteen and I was a legend then, of course I was, to myself and to them and of course I was struggling not to be dying that is not to know that dying was dying and frightening was not only frightening but connected with any thing. Believe it or not, to-day they say, that children that anybody between babyhood and fourteen, does not live any life in between this which is not 1914 but 1943 and the nineteenth century is dead dead dead, and between babyhood and fourteen, I was there to begin to kill what was not dead, the nineteenth century which was so sure of evolution and prayers, and esperanto and their ideas. You might think
I mean that between babyhood and fourteen, I might mean to be doing what I was doing, and in a way I was, I see them now, between babyhood and fourteen and in a kind of a way I was.

What is a legend.

There are no legends now, because nobody can now can see how they have been not now, this is 1943.

From babyhood until fourteen, to play in a garden in the evening when it is darkening is a legend. It feels like that, it is like that, any evening when it is darkening.

Between babyhood and fourteen there comes a time when in reading you cannot help thinking what happened after and what happened to their children and their grandchildren and which one married which one and what war was going on when they were growing or grown up and were they after all the time it took to be born and grown were they killed in the war that was going on then. Now in 1943 when there are armies and armies and they come humming in and the air at night, when the moon is bright is full of them going over to Italy to do their bombing and the mountain makes a reverberation as a woman said to me like being inside a copper cooking utensil well then you keep on thinking how quickly anybody can get killed, just as quickly just as very quickly, more quickly even than in a book even much more quickly than in any book, those up there flying and bombing and those down below, with houses tumbling, and burning.