And by this time we have become accustomed to them.
Strange! I gaze at these silent faces that seem to laugh at us, at these wounds that seem to mouth at us fantastically, as if they had I nothing to do with me. It strikes me all as so remote, so indifferent. As if all these dead bodies were lying in glass cases, as if I were in an anatomical museum, and were staring with dispassionately curious eyes at some scientific exhibits.
Sometimes no wounds at all are visible. The bullets have passed through the uniforms somewhere, and have gone clean through the softer parts of the bodies.
They have grown rigid in death in grotesque postures as if Death had been trying to pose figures here. There are certain schemes of Death that are always recurring. Hands out-stretched—fingers clawing the grass—fallen forward on to the face—that fellow over there lying on his back is holding his hand pressed tight against his abdomen, as if he were trying to staunch the wound.
In the country I was once watching them killing sheep. There a beast lay, and was waiting for the butcher, and as the short knife cut through its windpipe and jugular vein, and the blood leaped hot from its neck, I could see nothing but the big eye, how it enlarged in its head to a fearsome stare, until at last it turned to a dull glass.
All the bodies lying about here, as if bleating up to heaven, have got these glazed eyes, they are lying as if they were outstretched in the abattoir. Well, to be hit and to fall down dead, there's nothing to make a fuss about that! But to be shot through the chest, to be shot through the belly, to burn for hours in the fever of your wounds, to cool your mangled body in the wet grass, and to stare up into the pitiless blue heavens because your accursed eyes go on refusing to glaze over yet——
I turn away from them. I force myself to look past these mocking, grotesque posés plastiques of Death.
And I am already spirited far away, and am sitting in my little study at home. My coffee cup is standing snugly to my hand. My book-case is beaming down on me. My well-loved books invite me, and in front of me my book of books, "Faust," lies open. And so I read, and feel the wonderful relaxation that comes after work stealing through my longing blood.
The door opens. A little girl, and a boy who has just learned the use of his legs, put their noses in at the door.
"Daddy, may we?"