Читать книгу Guerrilla - Edward 18th Baron of Dunsany Plunkett - Страница 5

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The army had surrendered, the Germans were through the mountains; and what was always referred to as The Land, as though in reality there were no other country to care about, was one more particle of the German loot. To men accustomed to horses, the Germans had come with amazing speed; to men who never spoke of a distance by measurement, but only of the time it took to get from one place to another, their pace was bewildering. One day they were ringing their bells in the little capital, for news of a fine stand that one of their divisions had made. The next day the Germans were marching down the main street.

Puzzled citizens were walking slowly about the central square; and, when a man stood up on a dais where tea was usually served in the afternoons, and began to make a speech, there was soon a crowd. A few politenesses and little flatteries, and he began to explain the position. England had begun the war, he explained, by attacking Poland. The Germans had therefore had to establish a defensive position there; and, in order to make this impregnable, they had to occupy several other countries as a purely temporary measure. To these countries they came for the countries' own good, as otherwise England would seize them, and this was particularly the case with The Land. Hitler himself had appointed a Protector for The Land, and, if he were duly obeyed, his protection would be equally shared by all, and The Land would have the advantage of the highest possible culture, which was only to be enjoyed by those nations banded together in the new European order established by Adolf Hitler. Resistance would be most severely punished, and was also useless, because they had no rifles, and could not possibly fight in the plains, where they would be helpless against the big German tanks. Anyone who went into the mountains would be foolish, because the German aeroplanes, of which there were hundreds of thousands, could go over the mountains as easily as tanks could go over the plains, and even quicker. The army had surrendered, and it was the duty of all civilians to maintain order and wear a quiet demeanour. The Germans wished them well, and he reciprocated by calling for three cheers for Adolf Hitler. He got a cheer from a few; the rest were silent; and three men who had not cheered were led away by German policemen and instantly shot.

The sound of the volley from a small wood near by, in which the men were shot, came, as it was intended to come, to the central square. But instead of having an effect, as the Germans had planned, it had two effects. One effect was the one the Germans intended, merely fear; but on most of the crowd the effect was one that the Germans have never understood.

There was no protest: all in the square were unarmed. The crowd moved quickly away from the speaker, and slowly out of the square; Srebnitz was among them, the nephew of the old man who told this story in London. Srebnitz had just left school and not yet gone to the university, where he was due for his first term in a fortnight's time. He went away mournfully, about halfway between the two moods I have mentioned. He went back to his home, where he lived with his father and mother in a street not far from the square. He went into the room in which his parents were sitting. His mother looked up quickly when he came in, but said nothing. His father did not even look up. At last Srebnitz spoke.

"Is The Land finished?" he said.

His father smiled grimly. "That is impossible," he said.

"Oh, no," was his mother's answer to Srebnitz.

"Why is it impossible?" asked the boy.

"After three thousand years of freedom," said his father, "it cannot be lost."

"But why not?" his son asked.

"You don't know what three thousand years are," his father replied. "In all that time freedom grows so hard that it is like a piece of rock at the core of a mountain, that cannot be broken or ground away, and cannot disappear ever."

"We have no rifles," said his son.

His father sighed and shrugged his shoulders, but would not abandon his point. His wife said nothing, but agreed with him and hoped that their son would share his father's point of view. But the son only repeated all the arguments about mountains and tanks and plains that the man had used who had spoken in the square, although he hated the man; and his father had nothing to say against these arguments; for tanks and planes were all new to him, or rather new to his thought: he had heard about them for more than twenty years, but he had not thought of them much. Deep in his thoughts was the old thought of The Land and its three thousand years of story, and he felt that aeroplanes may come and go, and all other inventions that had been on trial as yet for so short a time, while The Land must go on for ever. But he could only repeat that The Land was eternal, and had nothing whatever to say to help Srebnitz when he asked how they could help her. Srebnitz had an air-gun, which for the last five years had been the principal treasure of his life. He used to go up with it into the mountain beyond the city, and sometimes, very rarely, shoot a coney.

"I have my air-gun," he said.

But his father only smiled. Why? thought the boy, and felt the smile was unjust. His father could tell him of no actual deed, no material thing, that could be of any practical use. And when he mentioned one, small but at least something, he only met with derision. Almost he flared up, to defend himself and his air-gun, but he saw his mother's face looking so sad, and his country's case seemed to himself so hopeless, that he walked mournfully away and went up to his own room.

In an air that was vibrating with events, every sound seemed to be magnified. He heard the bronze knocker on their door send echoes through the house, and the trifle altered his mood as a pebble may alter the face of a pond. And it altered it for the better, for his hopes were then at the lowest at which they had ever been, and any change was good. He ran down the stairs with the speed of a man who is expecting a visitor, though he expected nothing; and, opening the door, he found his friend Gregor, a young man who had been at school with him and had left for the university the term before. He was standing there, with his handsome southern face, dark hair and keen eyes, and Srebnitz saw in an instant that that expression of misery, that was in nearly all faces now, was not in Gregor's face. Two women passed, both with tears in their eyes, but Gregor's eyes were flashing, as they usually were when he talked with Srebnitz, and Srebnitz's spirits rose at the sight: here seemed some glimmer of hope where there had been none at all, a light in complete darkness. Perhaps Srebnitz was volatile, but these were times in which all men were volatile.

"What are you going to do?" asked Gregor.

Do? There seemed nothing to do. Yet the very question cheered Srebnitz. Gregor must think that something could be done. Srebnitz had the admiration for Gregor that boys have for an elder boy, picked from among other elder boys as one standing out even among them. All elder boys are wonderful to the younger ones: indeed half a year's growth is a phenomenon making a real, and rather mysterious, difference, such as more rarely exists among full-grown men; and, added to these few months of extra age, was the superiority of Gregor himself, which made him stand out even among his own exact contemporaries; or at least so it seemed to Srebnitz. The world knows nothing of the great figures between eighteen and nineteen years old, as viewed by those between seventeen and eighteen. Sometimes such a lad fulfils his promise, and dazzles the world as he dazzled the boys that knew him: more often the chances of life and his character, interwoven together, produce something that soon fades in the light of the years, while a boy that nobody quite remembers has at length from mankind the kind of honour that ought to have gone to the captain of the football eleven. But it was not in football that Gregor shone, a game with which they toyed rather than played, nor even at their own national game; it was not in athletics at all that Gregor excelled in such a way as to win the admiration of Srebnitz, but in an intense brightness of mind, which could go to the heart of poetry as the humming-bird hawk-moth goes to the hearts of the flowers, which great numbers of them were doing every evening at the time that the Germans arrived.

It was from Gregor's conversation that Srebnitz found whole new worlds. He was all to Srebnitz that Chapman had been to Keats. He quoted to him not only from Byron, of whom Srebnitz knew already, but told him that there were other poets in the world beyond The Land. He had astounded Srebnitz with Coleridge. He had told him, roughly, in their own language, the story of Kubla Khan. Gregor himself did not know much English, and his story was wholly in prose, but his keen enthusiasm passed the enchantment on. Queer fragments of it stayed in Srebnitz's mind, and grew there like flowers from seeds brought from a far country.

"There were very old voices there," said Gregor, "that prophesied war." That was one of the sounds of a strange dark scene that remained in Srebnitz's imagination for ever.

Another fragment told of a girl singing. "She sang of Mount Abora," said Gregor, with eyes shining. Had Srebnitz had any idea of where Mount Abora was, the effect on his imagination, and indeed on the memories of his life, would have been weaker; as it was, the gardens and forests of a new and very wonderful land were added to the store that his mind had garnered, and there they lay among all those facts and illusions upon which he looked whenever his eyes turned inwards. And in those gardens was always a girl singing; and far far beyond the gardens and over the forest, a grey shape faint in pale sky, arose the peak of Mount Abora. Had it been shown on the map, it was only a mountain. Had he seen it with his own eyes, it was still but a mountain, a material thing, unenchanted. But a Coleridge told of it, and as translation withered it, and as Gregor brought it to life again, it was a thing so wonderful as to be the theme of a song; and the Abyssinian girl brought it nearer, calling it over the world with a power denied to Mahomet.

And here was Gregor asking what Srebnitz was going to do, as though a free choice were still possible, as though freedom, after all, had not left The Land. What could be done?

"What are you going to do?" asked Srebnitz.

"I am going into the Mountain," said Gregor.

A tramp of marching feet was heard, as the boys went inside. On the way up to Srebnitz's room Gregor explained that an army was gathering there, led by Hlaka, a veteran of an old war, who had gone to the Mountain, and was already among the peaks when the Germans arrived in the capital, and his followers would join him there one by one. Srebnitz listened at first with flaming hopes, but upon them suddenly fell like thunder-showers the arguments of the traitor in the Square: they had no guns, no rifles. All the light suddenly went out of Srebnitz's eyes as they walked across his room to the window. "We have no rifles," said Srebnitz.

"There are plenty there," said Gregor, pointing out over the town.

The marching feet were nearer: it was a battalion of German infantry coming down the street. Gregor opened the window and waved his handkerchief to them and, as they came underneath, shouted "Sieg heil."

"What does that mean?" asked Srebnitz, puzzled and mournful.

"I don't know," said Gregor, "but it is something the Germans shout."

"Why do you do it?" asked Srebnitz.

"Because I want one of their rifles," Gregor replied.

Srebnitz looked in astonishment at his face, and saw nothing there but a grim determination. Srebnitz's astonishment had no effect on that look, and it remained there steadfast. Then Srebnitz knew that Gregor had really a plan, and that something could be done. Gregor turned from him again to the window and went on waving his handkerchief, and again shouted "Sieg heil." It was long before Gregor turned from the window.

"Every man who brings a rifle," he said, "will be admitted to Hlaka's army."

"One of theirs?" asked Srebnitz.

"One of theirs," said Gregor.

Gregor went to the window again and leaned out and looked down the street after the German battalion. He was no longer waving his handkerchief, and he had a different look in his eyes now. Then he closed the window and turned back to Srebnitz.

"And bring some cartridges if you can," he said. "Rifles are no good without cartridges."

"You are really going?" said Srebnitz.

"I am going tonight," said Gregor.

"How lovely," cried Srebnitz.

"Not at all," Gregor answered. "It is very terrible indeed. When I go there will be reprisals, and they will kill people."

"They will kill innocent people?" gasped Srebnitz.

"I don't know what 'innocent people' means," said Gregor. "They will kill people who have done nothing, because I have done my duty. It is most terrible. It will be as though I had plunged my knife into their hearts. But Our People must be free. Or dead. Many have died in three thousand years. But all who lived have been free. We must be free."

Srebnitz gazed at him and hope came among his dreams, as Gregor had once brought Mount Abora into his imagination.

Gregor went on. "Say Heil Hitler wherever you go. The little monkey likes it, and his slaves insist on it. Say it whenever you speak to anyone, and whenever you stop speaking to them. I waved from your window and shouted one of their shouts, so that they shan't come here first, when they come to shoot people. But they'll come here some day, and it's better to die on the Mountain. They'll kill your father and mother when they come."

Srebnitz gasped. "They wouldn't do that!" he exclaimed.

Gregor turned round on Srebnitz, full in front of him, close.

"You must understand the Germans," he said. "Get your mind clear. If they are harmless decent people, you don't want to kill them, at least not the way we shall do it. You must find out what they are, before you know how to treat them. You don't shoot your neighbours' dogs; you do shoot the fox. Find out what they are, for yourself; then you'll know how to treat them. When you are ready, come to the Mountain."

The Mountain was quite close to the town: they could see its peaks clear from the window, and could sometimes see moving dots that were wild sheep: nothing else lived there.

"I am ready now," said Srebnitz.

"No," said Gregor. "You believe what I say. That's nice of you. But wait till you know it for yourself. You will fight better that way. You will fight then as we shall have to fight. This isn't war, you know. No battles and medals and strategy. This is guerrilla. This is killing, as we kill animals. That is to say, as butchers in the town, and as hunters up in the Mountain."

To his astonishment Srebnitz saw that Gregor was going. He gazed at him. Gregor had told him nothing of what he was to do, and he had looked to Gregor for the minutest instructions. Hoping yet to be told how to act, he said:

"But how do I get a rifle?"

"You have a knife?" asked Gregor.

"Yes," answered Srebnitz.

And, as Srebnitz said that, Gregor's face lit up with a most charming smile, which lingered upon it as he walked across the room and was shining there still as he went out of the door, looking back into Srebnitz's face.