Interbellum
Photograph by Sei Hong Cheng
By Tim Brinkhof
Struggling to ignore my own reflection in the window, I looked out over the countryside and briefly managed to forget who I was and where I was going. Not until we passed a rotted wooden bridge I used to jump off as a kid was I pulled back into the present moment. The dread inside me having reached its boiling point, I turned away from the sunny landscape outside, and looked at the smiles that stained the faces of my fellow soldiers.
The closer we got to our final destination, the more restless we became. One young man in the back began singing “Pack Up Your Troubles,” and soon enough the entire regiment sang along with him—everyone except me; as the train slowly rolled into the station of my sleepy little hometown, my heart beat faster than it had done during all four years I spent at the front.
When the doors opened we were welcomed by applause that was as deafening as the dropping of a bombshell, and the men rushed toward the exits as though they were escaping a sinking submarine or burning tank. Possessed by the kind of energy which nature normally reserved for a cornered animal, they pushed, pulled and clawed at whoever happened to get in their way.
Pushing through the surging crowd, I hung my head low and made my body small so as not to attract any more attention than I absolutely had to. Here and there, I caught glimpses of wailing mothers hugging their long-lost sons and shy little children meeting their fathers for the first time in their lives, and no matter where I turned, I found men and women calling out for their missing halves.
When, having patrolled the entire platform up and down, I was still unable to find her, a small part of me started to think that she may not have showed up. Had I not known better, I’d have almost sighed with relief. But I did; I had written her that I was coming home several weeks ago, after all, and the news of our return had traveled faster than we had.
As I fought with myself, my eye fell on a young woman violently throwing her arms around a handsome soldier in clean uniform who, after a long embrace, kissed her so powerfully it seemed his lips would never leave hers again. Suddenly feeling nauseous and lightheaded, I quickly walked away and, as the cruel hands of fate would have it, nearly bumped into the very person I’d been looking for.
From her hair, to her dress, down to the ring I had put on her finger the night before I left for France—everything was exactly the way I remembered. Having pictured this exact moment many times before though never having the nerves to actually prepare for it, I did not know what to say. To my good fortune, she opened her mouth first, but to my surprise, the thing she said was, “Sorry.” The word came out coldly, as though it was addressed to a stranger.
I was so taken aback by her response that I hardly noticed her leaning sideways to look past me, over me, behind me, through me, at the sea of men that poured out of the train. Only when she circled around me, clearly uneased as well as a little annoyed, did I realize she had not recognized me.
At that moment, I wished I had not just written her that I was coming home, but explained what had happened to me, too. Surely the extra details would not have spared her any pain, of course, but at least she could have braced herself.
After a couple minutes of watching her search for me, I decided it was too cruel to wait any longer, so I cleared my throat, touched her shoulder, and, in a coarse voice, muttered, “Bella, it’s me.”
As she turned around to look at me, her eyes (which had already filled up with tears) grew twice as large, and she gasped as though she were watching a horrible accident unfold right in front of her.
When we tried to have sex later that night I offered to cover up my face, but she would not let me. Whether she wanted to please me or prove something to herself, I do not know, but it made no difference either way. Distracted by the look on her face, which had not changed since our meeting at the platform, I closed my eye and pretended we were back on the night before I went to France. That helped, for a little while. But then she started crying, and I had to tell her this was not going to work.
It took several hours for her to fall asleep. Unable to follow her, I got up to pace the room and, as I did, became aware of the irksome fact that I had not looked at myself for about two weeks now. Normally the thought didn’t irk me this much; on the contrary, not looking at myself was precisely how I got by. However, the events of the day had made me anxious to look, so I took a deep breath and sat myself down in front of the mirror.
It’s funny. When I was a kid, I hated my face. I hated my high cheekbones, thick eyebrows, and sunken eyes. I had always wanted to look different, and now I did. Everything I used to loath about myself had been blown away by the blast of a bullet (along with a few other things), and replaced by a heavy, neutral lump of hairless flesh that stuck to my face like a fattened parasite.
At the front, I had watched my friends die in the most meaningless ways imaginable, and though at the time their deaths had driven me mad with rage, I now remember their final moments fondly, and even enviously. Their bodies were torn to shreds, just like mine, even worse, in some cases—but at least they had not been forced to keep on living, too.
I looked at the bed, and at the person lying in it. Watching the look on her face, which persisted even in sleep, I suddenly felt guilty. I thought back to that instance earlier today when she did not recognize me, and wondered why I had not simply walked away without saying a word. Sure, she would have never known what had happened to me, and I may not have been able to say goodbye, but she would have remembered me the way I used to be, not as what I became.
A few hours later, I once again approached the station, which was now deserted save for a handful of men standing at the platform edge. Some of them were mutilated, too, missing an arm or leg. Others looked completely fine except for the cold, lifeless look in their eyes. They nodded at me and I nodded at them, and that was that; we understood one another. Then, a sullen conductor covered in soot appeared out of nowhere to announce our departure, and in the cold hours of the morning we got on the train and set out for the only place on earth that men like us could still call home: the front.
Tim Brinkhof is a Dutch-born, New York-based writer who studied history and literature at New York University. He currently works as an editorial assistant for Film Comment magazine, and his writing has been published by the New York Observer.