The day I went to the front my mother was by my side. She wanted to give me a hug, of course, but I couldn't reciprocate. She, hurt by my inevitable rejection, was aware of my every move, as if by doing so she could record them forever in her memory and thus make my memories permeate the house. My father paid me no attention. Attached to his crutches, he walked from here to there, he walked through the living room of our little house as if it were the scene of a sports award, moving away a chair there, surrounding the sofa there. He moved with great skill with those wooden extensions that he had made himself. She fantasized about the idea of mutilating herself, of amputating a leg at the knee, as some mothers did to their children, thus ensuring a civil service career away from death, arms, and change. He fantasized about getting promoted if he mustered up enough nerve to cut just below the kneecap. My father would never understand what had led me to decide to go to the front. He was selfish, incapable. I would never understand a patriot.
I saw my mother cry, broken with pain, from the back of the truck that was transporting us to the enemy lines. I wanted to share her pain, cry like she did, but it was something that was also forbidden to me. So I just contemplated her there, in the middle of the town square, alone, mourning my absence as my brother mourned at the time, while the truck drove away and led us to the horror of the Great War.
He shared a trip with three other soldiers, modified like me. Two Trenches sat in front of me, and next to me a Bayonet, of those with a sharp weapon for an arm and a fleeting gaze. The Trenches hid their faces behind the massive rusty engine that served as their mask. The steel propellers that sprouted from the shaft, almost half a meter long, brushed the roof of the vehicle and made its every move uncomfortable. They were silent, their hands folded in their laps. I didn't know if they could actually speak, I had never seen one of them up close. I remembered them from the newspaper papers, where photos from the front showed many of them working in the ground, drilling it to form the tunnels that would serve as a refuge from the enemy. Here, so close, their faces disappeared into a dark hole covered in rust, a pit that did not allow to discern a single trait of humanity that had survived after the modification.
-A cigarette? The Bayonet said to me, and I said no, because I thought he was offering it to me.
He was actually asking for it, and my gesture made him uncomfortable. He looked down, fumbled with his unarmed hand in imaginary pockets on his uniform to no avail. The roar of the truck's engine kept me awake, but all I wanted was to close my eyes and get where I had to go. To fight the enemy. To win a war that was not mine. To die, like my brother. Little by little the tension of the day overcame me. Little by little I let the dream win over me.
And I dreamed.
I dreamed of German soldiers, their faces covered by gas masks from which tubes sprouted and plunged into their torsos. I dreamed of armored cars with human faces, of zeppelins manned by faceless men bombing our small town. And I dreamed of my father, mutilated, crawling through the town square while my brother, attached to the remains of the biplane that was an inseparable part of his body, laughed out loud and cried blood.
I woke up with a start. I was sweating. I leaned out of the truck to feel the breeze on my face. And I saw them up there, so close, so far. So majestic. Biplanes. Men attached to platforms of linen cloth by steel wires flew over the battlefields, first in aerial reconnaissance missions, then in bombing tasks. By the time we got off the truck, it was dark, but a handful of them hovered overhead, silhouetted against the full moon. My brother had been one of them until one of those Germans had shot him down. He still remembered the fragments of his modified body, broken like the wood that covered a large part of his limbs, when his body was handed over to us.
The truck had stopped next to a small outpost, just a few badly stacked bags of earth and a sentry box that covered the entrance to the quartermaster zone of the trenches. Beyond that, we could sense the front, that wasteland that separated our two small subterranean cities, a paradise for rats and beings abandoned to their fate. I raised my hand to the man who came up to us. He had the rank of a lieutenant and was probably my age.
"Welcome to the front, boys." Nice to see you, ”he said, but his eyes contradicted his words.
She looked at us like the young woman who enters the booth at the fair with her boyfriend, dragged into the dark and smelly interior, terrified at the expectation of contemplating some horror of nature. And his pupils dilated even more when he saw me in front of him.
"Son, how much do you weigh?" -I wonder.
I was naked in front of him. In front of everyone actually. My skin had been modified to withstand the cold and the soles of my feet had been altered so as not to feel the moisture of the mud we were stepping on. They didn't want to lose their two-year job over bloody trench feet, of course not. So my presumed fragility, necessary to be located correctly, was just that, presumed. He didn't need her compassion, not even her affection. I needed him to let me be part of the front, to allow me to earn my salary. Despite that, I spoke to him with respect, as he was a lieutenant, probably mine.
"Thirty-two kilos, sir."
And the lieutenant nodded, took off his cap and passed his hand over his forehead.
-Very well. Very well. We are going to divide up. Son, go to the sergeant. There is another like you waiting with him. It will take you to your posts. The Trenches, please follow me. And you too.
He pointed to the bayonet that, head down, went after him. It was starting to rain. I walked behind an assault sergeant, the ones with the armored heads and loopholes for eyes. He did not speak much, of course, because his face had suffered so many alterations that his mouth was hardly a poorly drawn slit, a need that had not been able to be suppressed to allow his feeding. He gestured the way to me. The rain was raging and the walls of the trenches were crumbling like rye bread. While the mud soaked me, I passed men, modified or not, who looked at me with disgust and respect. For all of them we were new, different. We were the surprise, what the Germans could not expect. We were La Alambrada.
The underground labyrinth confused me. He could barely keep up with the sergeant. With every step I took my feet sank into the mud, bumping into rats, living and dead. The rain was now a storm. The night was dark. Perfect. The sergeant raised a hand, we stopped. And there was my partner. To anyone else it would have gone unnoticed, but I could discover in that impossible contortion of the barbed wire the body of the man with whom I would soon shake hands.
I said goodbye to the sergeant, climbed a small wooden staircase to the outside. I was afraid, of course. Panic. They could shoot me right then and there and I couldn't do anything to stop it. But nothing happened. It was dark night. It was raining. And we all knew that those were the nights when the troops advanced and the trench wars were mired in blood.
"Hello," said the other Barbed wire.
"Hi," I whispered.
I shook his hand. I placed my body in a position impossible for another human being. We were both Barbed wire. We were already part of it. I felt my partner's barbed wire sinking into the skin of my palm. I felt the pain, a pain that would keep me alert, that would keep me awake. Because they would come tonight. They would advance under the cover of darkness, of rain. And there we would be, waiting.
Waiting to give them a hug.
Story data
- Author Santiago exempt
- Degree: Barbed wire
- Topic: Terror
- No. of words: 1370