has had his pants full after the first bombardment. Go behind that bush there and throw your underpants away. Get along———”
★★
He goes off. Things become quieter, but the cries do not cease. “What’s up, Albert?” I ask.
“A couple of columns over there have got it in the neck.”
The cries continue. It is not men, they could not cry so terribly.
“Wounded horses,” says Kat.
It’s unendurable. It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning.
We are pale. Detering stands up. “God! For God’s sake! Shoot them!”
He is a farmer and very fond of horses. It gets under his skin. Then as if deliberately the fire dies down again. The screaming of the beasts becomes louder. One can no longer distinguish whence in this now quiet, silvery landscape it comes; ghostly, invisible, it is everywhere, between heaven and earth it rolls on immeasurably. Detering raves and yells out: “Shoot them! Shoot them, can’t you? damn you again!”
62
