Save the Last Bullet for God (37 page)

I called the wolf to come and after it
accompanied me for a few steps, it began to pull me, biting my
cuff. At first I tried to resist, but since I didn’t know where to
go, I let it lead me.

The wolf brought me to a deep pit with a few
corpses at the bottom. After sniffing around the edge, the wolf
rushed into the pit and started to pull at something among the
dead. I slid into the pit and gasped when I saw the layer of yellow
gas on the bottom.

Then I saw it. A slightly-moving arm with
gloved fingers. The chemicals were now making me cough, and my eyes
were watering, so I clumsily reached for my gas mask and went to
help the man escape from underneath the corpses.

It took a little time and attention and a
lot of effort to take the skinny soldier out from among the dead.
Finally seeing the same uniform as mine, I didn’t ask
questions.

He was deep down and it took all my strength
to drag the other dead bodies off of him. I didn’t know if the man
I was saving was a friend or an enemy, but when I saw that he wore
the same uniform as mine, it put me more at ease. I was exhausted,
and I kept sinking into the mud, but inch by inch and breath by
breath, I managed to move the soldier close to the surface.

I crawled out of the pit, and stepping on
rifles, pistol grips, bayonets, and barbed wire planks, I struggled
to drag the body out. At one point, the nail of my ring finger
caught on something in the mud and a searing pain shot through my
hand. I screamed and swore and stared at the blood as it drained
drop by drop.

Gray. There is no other color that reveals
the brightness of red. The drops of blood shone on the gray ground
circled by white fog. Some red drops touched the water, thinning
out in small swirls. When I pulled myself together, I put on the
glove of a dead man and dragged the soldier the rest of the way out
of the pit .

The two of us lay on the ground, exhausted
and sweaty with wheezy breaths. We stayed there for a long time,
looking at the foggy sky. When I gathered my strength, I quietly
stood up and led the soldier to fresher air. He began to speak
rapidly, saying something incomprehensible.

“What is it?” I asked in surprise. “What do
you want?”

At the sound of my voice, rifles began
firing in our direction. The shots came from both sides.
Even our side is shooting at us,
I
thought.

When things calmed down, I made sure to
whisper.

“Take it easy, pal. It’s okay. You’ll
recover,” I said.

His gaze was blank, and I tried to bring him
around by shaking him. I checked his pulse to confirm that he was
still alive. His pulse was weak but it was there, so I picked him
up and lifted him onto my back.

The wolf was still there circling us and I
feared we would get shot if it made noise. Keeping quiet, I kicked
the wolf in its chest. “That’s enough!” I growled through clenched
teeth. “Just walk away!”

With the wolf leaping from the kick and
moving ahead of us, we set off for our uncertain journey through
the fog. I walked, periodically falling on the ground, standing up,
and spitting mud without being aware of how long nor toward which
direction we had been walking.

When the fog thinned and noon arrived, the
edge of the forest appeared. I saw that the oak trees had already
shed their leaves, leaving behind barren black branches. With my
passenger, I passed from a land covered in mud and corpses to a
land covered in mud and dead leaves. There was no escaping this
season of death.

In the forest, I sapped all my strength
moving among the dense trees and shrubs. The wolf was now out of
sight as if it had melded into the background. I heard it barking
and growling, and I walked towards it as well as I could.

When I decided that we had escaped, I
hoisted the soldier off of my back and onto a bed of soft leaves,
then headed toward the sound of the wolf. The wolf led me to a
narrow lake, where beside it stood an old tree with a large cavity
inside it. After a short rest, I used my last bit of strength to
drag the soldier to the tree and put him in the warmth of the
cavity. Then I curled up next to him and fell asleep.

It was almost dark when I awoke to
excruciating screams, wheezes, and kicks. The soldier had regained
his consciousness and was grunting and pushing against me.

“Where am I? What is this place? Who are
you? I can’t see, damn it! I can’t see! What have you done to me?”
his weak and thin voice echoed off the walls of the tree and out
into the forest.

“For God’s sake,” I said, getting up and
stepping outside, “shut up and calm down! How am I supposed to know
why you can’t see?”

I was annoyed that he was reacting in such a
way rather than expressing his thanks. I had put forth great effort
to save the bastard. Part of me wanted to shoot him.

I waited until his screams became wheezes
and his movements subsided, then I headed toward the lake to get a
stone in case he decided to make noise again. Once there, I
realized how thirsty I was. I drank deeply from the lake, paused
and drank again. I began to recover, feeling much calmer now. I
splashed my face and let the lake wash away the mud on my hands.
Evening was approaching and I now felt peaceful, so I left the
stone behind and returned to the soldier with some water.

“Calm down and don’t push your luck,” I
warned him. “I’m the only one here. We’re in the woods. I don’t
know where the enemy is, and I don’t want to find out. Here’s some
water. Give me your hands and be calm. If you pour it out, I’m not
bringing you anymore.”

I settled his erratic hands and gave him the
shell full of water. He wasted most of it finding his mouth, but
still managed a few sips. I took the shell from his hands and went
to get more. Give a human being something and you’ll gain his
trust; our exchange that afternoon proved that hypothesis.

I held his hand, helped him out of the
cavity and to stand up without hitting his head on a branch.
Holding him upright, I described the surroundings and helped him
down to the lake. While I watched this blind man drink water and
wash himself with seemingly inexperienced gestures, I realized the
wolf had joined us. It came and sat beside us and calmly waited. I
described the wolf to the soldier and led his hand to caress the
wolf’s head. That’s when I noticed the rabbit in the wolf’s
mouth.

I collected dry wood and shrubs to make a
fire and skinned the rabbit. The soldier took a lighter out of his
pocket to help start the fire. We were so hungry, we ate the rabbit
when it was only half-cooked.

We had survived and avoided dying of hunger
and thirst, but the skinny soldier still cried over his blindness
and misfortune as he sat next to the smoldering fire.

I could have given a cliché like “Be
thankful you’re alive,” but sharing his pain would weaken me too.
Instead, I remained silent, surrendered myself to the pitch-black
forest and the sounds of night birds and fell asleep.

We woke up with the first light of morning.
Despite the frost, we were warm, having snuggled into the warm fur
of the wolf by the dead fire.

When the soldier realized I was awake, he
began to share what he remembered.

“I don’t know how long ago,” he said, “but
we were in a counter attack. We hid in a hole because of the heavy
smoke and we suffered a chemical attack. the last thing I saw was
the yellow gas coming inside the hole. I mean, I wasn’t blind
before. I was an artist before the war; I painted beautiful
pictures when I was in Vienna.”

“I come from Vienna, too,” I said. “I joined
the army after I finished school there.”

“Actually, I was in Munich when the war
started, and I joined the war with the Bavarian army at the first
opportunity. These last two years, I have seen so much war and
death that I feel like my life in Vienna never happened.”

“It’s my first tour. I only recently joined
the army,” I confessed. “This is my second day.”

“I have a second degree iron cross medal,
and I was to become a corporal.”

“I’m a lieutenant,” I boasted and
immediately cursed my arrogance. “Anyway… I’ll make another fire
and check if there is something edible around.”

The previous night’s meal did us good. We
were more energetic, and we were living the joy of being in the
forest after a long ordeal. I picked from some edible shrubs I
remembered from my idyllic youth and the lake provided plenty of
water. When I returned with our lunch, the soldier was alert and
waiting for me.

“Describe it for me,” he said.

“Describe what for you?”

“The surroundings, everything you see, but
without skipping any details, especially the colors, and the
shadows!”

I then realized how many things I could see
and how few of them I paid attention to.

“There’s a wide and old tree that can only
be encircled with two or three men. It has thick, scattered, and
layered bark that looks like the skin of an old woman, but its
color ranges between dark brown and green. Some of it is green and
some more bluish. And there is a lot of moss piled up in the
direction of the wind. There is a meter-high cavity in a triangular
shape, and it is sticky and black-brown inside.

“There are leaves hiding among the yellow
grasses,” I continued. “A few of the leaves are yellow-green, but
most of them are yellow-brown. A grove of trees encircles the small
space with their dark, thin branches reaching up to the sky, and
they get lost in the depth of the shadows of the dark forest
beyond. Near where we sit, near our tree, there is a shallow, thin
lake the width of a few arm lengths. As the leaves fall in the
lake, the color of the water changes from transparent to brown with
swirls and other shades. The small pieces of sky I can see are gray
and dark-blue with white highlights in the light-blue. It seems as
if the light that can’t reach down except in a few patches. The
clouds move slowly like shadow pieces in various dark colors.”

“Thank you,” the blind soldier said.

I smiled.

“Thank you for helping me notice,” I
said.

In the evening, the wolf rewarded us with
another rabbit. From my foraging and imagination, I arranged a
feast of stewed rabbit. With my increased experience and courage,
the fire was bigger and warmer that night. We knew the storm of
death that was coming, but that night we rested full and
peaceful.

“If I survive and get my sight back, I will
live to the fullest, knowing the value of everything,” the soldier
said, as the dancing shadows of the fire leapt and etched lines of
determination on his face.

“Life must have a purpose,” I said, trying
to sound philosophical. “You can do it.”

“Yes, yes! All the faintheartedness will
vanish. I will be afraid of nothing. I will leave everything
behind, and I will use all my ambition.” The blue light in his
blind eyes flickered strangely as he talked.

“Will you go back to the front and be a
hero?” I asked.

“No. This is not my fight. I’ll be the
leader of my own war, one much bigger than this. Everybody will be
at my disposal, and I will make history. Now I’m just a young,
unsuccessful artist, a soldier no one cares about. But, I will
become a legend. Everyone will know my name.”

I laughed quietly to myself as I listened to
the grandiose ambitions of this person whose life I saved.

“One must have powerful weapons to win such
a war,” I said. “When I was a child…I had a teacher…” I suddenly
realized how much it hurt to talk about them, but I was able to
continue after removing the part involving my mother.

“His father was one of the first
archaeologists and studied civilizations that existed nearly five
thousand years ago,” I continued. “Back then, people were much
different than us, and they had incredibly powerful weapons that
could destroy their enemies instantly. There are other worlds and
lives, do you understand? People living there are not only
intelligent but also very strong. They can visit the Earth at
certain intervals, help the ones they favor to survive and succeed
in their effort at killing others. If they want, they can even
abolish a race.”

“Aliens?” he asked directly.

“Other worlds. Those little stars you see
are actually huge suns, and they have many more planets around them
like ours. If they live there and have the technology to reach here
from space, then imagine what kind of weapons they must have.”

“So, you mean there are other worlds apart
from this one, and there are other beings…not humans?”

“Well…of course…would archaeologists and
scientists and the inscriptions of thousands of years lie? Think of
our civilization, which is only 300–400 years old, and think about
what we can do. If you extend that 500 years, who knows what we
would have?—flying cities, huge ships sailing underwater, weapons
that burn the enemy from miles away.”

“What are they called?”

“They? The aliens?”

“Nah, those old civilizations. The
Egyptians?”

“No, much older than that.”

The soldier nodded with interest.

“There were the Sumerians in southwest Asia
and civilizations further away than that, societies in India who
used Sanskrit, and those who lived underground in the steppes of
Asia, whose name I can’t remember now. There were also two old
continents: Atlantis and Mu. But they are really old. I don’t know
much about them.”

As I spoke, the excitement of my childhood
returned. I was fascinated and felt like telling him everything
that came to my mind. Talking about it made me forget the current
situation and everything else that had happened.

When morning came, we ate breakfast, packed
our leftovers and decided to move on. With our guide, the wolf,
ahead of us and the hand of the blind soldier on my shoulder we set
off through the forest.