This
scene in A Man Could Stand Up, the
third novel of the Parades End tetralogy
by Ford Madox Ford is magnificently drawn out.
It’s World War I in the trenches and the hero, Christopher Tietjens, is
trying to defend against a German offensive.
There is a young soldier, Aranjuez, who has sunk into the mud, and most
of the scene deals with Tietjens pulling him out and carrying him to safety,
all the while bullets and bombs hurling about him. The language simplifies immensely to simulate
the fragmenting thoughts of the soldiers under immense pressure. Compare the staccato, simple sentences of
this battle scene with lush, flowing language of an earlier part of the book, a
scene describing Tietjens’ unfaithful wife, Sylvia, here. This is a very complex, modernist book, and I’m not sure I completely follow
everything, but the characters are really engaging and the writing is
exquisite. Ford Madox Ford is one of the
best prose stylist in the English language.
Here’s this remarkable scene.
It was slow, slow,
slow…like a slowed down movie. The earth
maneuvered for an infinite time. He
remained suspended in space. As if he
were suspended as he had wanted to be in front of that cockscomb in
whitewash. Coincidence!
The earth sucked slowly
and composedly at his feet.
It assimilated his
calves, his thighs. It imprisoned him
above the waist. His arms being free, he
resembled a man in a life-buoy. The earth
moved him slowly. It was solidish.
Below him, down a mound, the
face of little Aranjuez, brown, with immense black eyes in bluish whites,
looked at him. Out of viscous mud. A head on a charger! He could see ‘the imploring lips form the
words: ‘Save me, Captain!” He said: ‘I’ve
got to save myself first!’ He could not
hear his own words. The noise was
incredible.
A man stood over
him. He appeared immensely tall because
Tietjens’ face was on a level with his belt.
But he was a small Cockney Tommy really.
Name of Cockshott. He pulled at
Tietjens’ two arms. Tietjens tried to
kick with his feet. Then he realized it
was better not to kick with his feet. He
was pulled out. Satisfactorily. There had been two men at it. A second, a corporal had come. They were all three of them grinning. He slid down with the sliding earth towards
Aranjuez. He smiled at the pallid
face. He slipped a lot. He felt a frightful burning on his neck,
below and behind the ear. His hand came
down from feeling the place. The
finger-tips had no end of mud and a little pinkishness on them. A pimple had perhaps burst. He had at least two men not killed. He signed agitatedly to the Tommies. He made gestures of digging. They were to get shovels.
He stood over Aranjuez,
on the edge of liquid mud. Perhaps he
would sink in. He did not sink in. Not above his boot tops. He felt his feet to be enormous and
sustaining. He knew what had
happened. Aranjuez was sunk in the
issuing hole of the spring that made the bog.
It was like on Exmoor. He bent
down over the ineffable, small face. He
bent down lower and his hands entered the slime. He had to get on his hands and knees.
Fury entered his
mind. He had been sniped at. Before he had had that pain he had heard, he
realized, an intimate drone under the hellish tumult. There was reason for furious haste. Or, no….They were low. In a wide hole. There was no reason for furious haste. Especially on your hands and knees.
His hands were under the
slime, and his forearms. He battled his
hands down greasy cloth; under greasy cloth.
Slimy, not greasy! He pushed outwards. The boy’s hands and arms appeared. It was going to be easier. His face was not quite close to the boy’s,
but it was impossible to hear what he said.
Possibly he was unconscious.
Tietjens said: ‘Thank God for my enormous physical strength!’ It was the first time that he had ever had to
be thankful for great physical strength.
He lifted the boy’s arms over his own shoulders so that his hands might
clasp themselves behind his neck. They
were slimy and disagreeable. He was
short in the wind. He heaved back. The boy came up a little. He was certainly fainting. He gave no assistance. The slime was filthy. It was a condemnation of a civilisation that
he, Teitjens, possessed of enormous strength, should never have needed to use it
before. He looked like a collection of
mealsacks; but at least he could tear a pack of cards in half. If only his lungs weren’t…
Cockshott, the Tommy, and
the corporal were beside him, grinning.
With the two shovels that ought not to have stood against the parapet of
their trench. He was intensely
irritated. He had tried to indicate with
his signs that it was Lance-Corporal Duckett that they were to dig out. It was probably no longer Lance-Corporal
Duckett. It was probably by now
‘it’. The body! He had probably lost a man after all!
Cockshott and the
corporal pulled Aranjuez out of the slime.
He came out reluctantly, like a lugworm out of sand. He could not stand. His legs gave way. He drooped like a flower done in slime. His lips moved, but you could not hear
him. Tietjens took him from the two men
who supported him between the arms and laid him a little way up the mound. He shouted in the ear of the Corporal:
‘Duckett! Go and dig out Duckett! At the double.’
He knelt and felt the
boy’s back. His spine might have been
damaged. The boy did not wince. His spine might be damaged all the same. He could not be left there. Bearers could be sent with a stretcher if one
was to be found. But the might be sniped
coming. Probably, he, Tietjens, could
carry that boy, if his lungs held out.
If not, he could drag him. He
felt tender, like a mother, and enormous.
It might be better to leave the boy there. There was no knowing. He said: ‘Are you wounded?’ The guns had mostly stopped. Tietjens could not see any blood
flowing. The boy whispered: ‘No,
sir!’ He was, then, probably just faint. Shell shock very likely. There was no knowing what the shell shock was
or what it did to you. Or the mere
vapour of the projectile.
He could not stop there.
He took the boy under his
arm as you might do a roll of blankets.
If he took him on his shoulders he might get high enough to get
sniped. He did not go very fast, his
legs were so heavy. He bundled down
several steps in the direction of the spring in which the boy had been. There was more water. The spring was filling up that hallow. He could not have left the boy there. You could only imagine that his body had
corked up the springhole before. This
had been like being at home where they had springs like that. On the moors, digging out badgers. Digging earth drains, rather. Badgers have dry lairs. On the moors above Groby. April sunlight. Lots of sunlight and skylarks.
He was mounting the
mound. For some feet there was no other
way. They had been in the shaft made by
the projectile. He inclined to the
left. To the right would take them
quicker to the trench, but he wanted to get the mound between them and the
sniper. His breathing was tremendous. There was more light falling on them.
Exactly…Snap! Snap! Snap!...Clear
sounds from a quarter of a mile away…Bullets whined overhead. Long sounds, going away. Not snipers.
The men of a battalion. A
chance! Snap! Snap! Snap! Bullets whined overhead. Men of a battalion get excited when shooting
at anything running. They fire
high. Trigger pressure. He
was now a fat, running object. Did they
fire with a sense of hatred or fun!
Hatred probably. Huns have not
much sense of fun.
His breathing was
unbearable. Both his legs were like
painful bolsters. He would be on the
relatively level in two steps if he made them…Well, make them!...He was on the
level. He had been climbing, up
clods. He had to take an immense breath.
The ground under his left foot gave way.
He had been holding Aranjuez in front of his own body as much as he
could, under his right arm. As his left
foot sank in, the boy’s body came right on top of him. Naturally this stiffish earth in huge clods
had fissures in it. Apertures. It was not like regular digging.
The boy kicked, screamed,
tore himself lose….Well, if he wanted to go!
The scream was like a horse’s in a stable on fire. Bullets had gone overhead. The boy rushed off, his hands to his
face. He disappeared round the mound. It was a conical mound. He, Tietjens, could now crawl on his
belly. It was satisfactory.
He crawled. Shuffling himself along with his hips and
elbows. There was probably a text-book
way of crawling. He did not know it. The clods of earth appeared friendly. For bottom soil thrown to the top they did
not feel or smell so very sour. Still,
it would take a long time to get them into cultivation or under grass. Probably, agriculturally speaking, that
country would be in pretty poor condition for a long time….
He felt pleased with his
body. It had no exercise to speak of for
two months—as second-in-command. He
could not have expected to be in even the condition he was in. But the mind had probably had a good deal to
do with that! He had, no doubt, been in
a devil of a funk. It was only
reasonable. It was disagreeable to think
of those Hun devils hunting down the unfortunate. A disagreeable business. Still, we did the same….That boy must have
been in a devil of a funk.
Suddenly. He had held his hands
in front of his face. Afraid to
see. Well, you couldn’t blame him. They ought not to send out school-girls. He was like a girl. Still, he ought to have stayed to see that
he, Tietjens, was not pipped. He might
have thought he was hit from the way his left leg had gone down. He would have to be strafed. Gently.
