War

by Sherwood Anderson

　　

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The story came to me from a woman met on a train. The car was crowdedand I took the seat beside her. There was a man in the offing whobelonged with her--a slender girlish figure of a man in a heavy browncanvas coat such as teamsters wear in the winter. He moved up and downin the aisle of the car, wanting my place by the woman's side, but Idid not know that at the time.The woman had a heavy face and a thick nose. Something had happened toher. She had been struck a blow or had a fall. Nature could never havemade a nose so broad and thick and ugly. She had talked to me in verygood English. I suspect now that she was temporarily weary of the manin the brown canvas coat, that she had travelled with him for days,perhaps weeks, and was glad of the chance to spend a few hours in thecompany of some one else.Everyone knows the feeling of a crowded train in the middle of thenight. We ran along through western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. It hadrained for days and the fields were flooded. In the clear night themoon came out and the scene outside the car-window was strange and inan odd way very beautiful.You get the feeling: the black bare trees standing up in clusters asthey do out in that country, the pools of water with the moon reflectedand running quickly as it does when the train hurries along, the rattleof the car-trucks, the lights in isolated farm-houses, and occasionallythe clustered lights of a town as the train rushed through it into thewest.The woman had just come out of war-ridden Poland, had got out of thatstricken land with her lover by God knows what miracles of effort. Shemade me feel the war, that woman did, and she told me the tale that Iwant to tell you.I do not remember the beginning of our talk, nor can I tell you of howthe strangeness of my mood grew to match her mood until the story shetold became a part of the mystery of the still night outside the car-window and very pregnant with meaning to me.There was a company of Polish refugees moving along a road in Poland incharge of a German. The German was a man of perhaps fifty, with abeard. As I got him, he was much such a man as might be professor offoreign languages in a college in our country, say at Des Moines, Iowa,or Springfield, Ohio. He would be sturdy and strong of body and givento the eating of rather rank foods, as such men are. Also he would be afellow of books and in his thinking inclined toward the rankerphilosophies. He was dragged into the war because he was a German, andhe had steeped his soul in the German philosophy of might. Faintly, Ifancy, there was another notion in his head that kept bothering him,and so to serve his government with a whole heart he read books thatwould re-establish his feeling for the strong, terrible thing for whichhe fought. Because he was past fifty he was not on the battle line, butwas in charge of the refugees, taking them out of their destroyedvillage to a camp near a railroad where they could be fed.The refugees were peasants, all except the woman in the American trainwith me, her lover and her mother, an old woman of sixty-five. They hadbeen small landowners and the others in their party had worked on theirestate.Along a country road in Poland went this party in charge of the Germanwho tramped heavily along, urging them forward. He was brutal in hisinsistence, and the old woman of sixty-five, who was a kind of leaderof the refugees, was almost equally brutal in her constant refusal togo forward. In the rainy night she stopped in the muddy road and herparty gathered about her. Like a stubborn horse she shook her head andmuttered Polish words. "I want to be let alone, that's what I want. AllI want in the world is to be let alone," she said, over and over; andthen the German came up and putting his hand on her back pushed heralong, so that their progress through the dismal night was a constantrepetition of the stopping, her muttered words, and his pushing. Theyhated each other with whole-hearted hatred, that old Polish woman andthe German.The party came to a clump of trees on the bank of a shallow stream andthe German took hold of the old woman's arm and dragged her through thestream while the others followed. Over and over she said the words: "Iwant to be let alone. All I want in the world is to be let alone."In the clump of trees the German started a fire. With incredibleefficiency he had it blazing high in a few minutes, taking the matchesand even some bits of dry wood from a little rubber-lined pouch carriedin his inside coat pocket. Then he got out tobacco and, sitting down onthe protruding root of a tree, smoked and stared at the refugees,clustered about the old woman on the opposite side of the fire.The German went to sleep. That was what started his trouble. He sleptfor an hour and when he awoke the refugees were gone. You can imaginehim jumping up and tramping heavily back through the shallow stream andalong the muddy road to gather his party together again. He would beangry through and through, but he would not be alarmed. It was only amatter, he knew, of going far enough back along the road as one goesback along a road for strayed cattle.And then, when the German came up to the party, he and the old womanbegan to fight. She stopped muttering the words about being let aloneand sprang at him. One of her old hands gripped his beard and the otherburied itself in the thick skin of his neck.The struggle in the road lasted a long time. The German was tired andnot as strong as he looked, and there was that faint thing in him thatkept him from hitting the old woman with his fist. He took hold of herthin shoulders and pushed, and she pulled. The struggle was like a mantrying to lift himself by his boot straps. The two fought and were fullof the determination that will not stop fighting, but they were notvery strong physically.And so their two souls began to struggle. The woman in the train mademe understand that quite clearly, although it may be difficult to getthe sense of it over to you. I had the night and the mystery of themoving train to help me. It was a physical thing, the fight of the twosouls in the dim light of the rainy night on that deserted muddy road.The air was full of the struggle and the refugees gathered about andstood shivering. They shivered with cold and weariness, of course, butalso with something else. In the air everywhere about them they couldfeel the vague something going on. The woman said that she would gladlyhave given her life to have it stopped, or to have someone strike alight, and that her man felt the same way. It was like two windsstruggling, she said, like a soft yielding cloud become hard and tryingvainly to push another cloud out of the sky.Then the struggle ended and the old woman and the German fell downexhausted in the road. The refugees gathered about and waited. Theythought something more was going to happen, knew in fact something morewould happen. The feeling they had persisted, you see, and they huddledtogether and perhaps whimpered a little.What happened is the whole point of the story. The woman in the trainexplained it very clearly. She said that the two souls, afterstruggling, went back into the two bodies, but that the soul of the oldwoman went into the body of the German and the soul of the German intothe body of the old woman.After that, of course, everything was quite simple. The German sat downby the road and began shaking his head and saying he wanted to be letalone, declared that all he wanted in the world was to be let alone,and the Polish woman took papers out of his pocket and began drivingher companions back along the road, driving them harshly and brutallyalong, and when they grew weary pushing them with her hands.There was more of the story after that. The woman's lover, who had beena school-teacher, took the papers and got out of the country, takinghis sweetheart with him. But my mind has forgotten the details. I onlyremember the German sitting by the road and muttering that he wanted tobe let alone, and the old tired mother-in-Poland saying the harsh wordsand forcing her weary companions to march through the night back intotheir own country.

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