Briefing for a Descent Into Hell by Doris Lessing

  They were not the only ones to come secretly from the villages. By such recruitment, our group went up again to nearly thirty, seeming always to get younger and younger. The “old ones” would joke about “the children.” Miloš was “the old man.” He was twenty-four.

  Although it was summer, we were always short of food, and our medical supplies were low. Konstantina was reduced to a few bandages and ointment. It was decided that she and I would go to a village where her aunt lived, to try and get supplies. The plan was for us to move up to the edge of a field above the village, where the women would be at work among the maize. Konstantina knew the village well, and the habits of the people. She knew they were sympathetic to us, and hated the occupying Croats. The women would bring a skirt, a blouse, a kerchief. Konstantina would put them on, join the working women, return with them to the village at midday, and go to her aunt’s house. There she would get her aunt to find bandages, disinfectants, medicines, and food. There was only one point of danger that we could foresee, which was that at this time of the year the women often did not return to their homes for the midday meal, but took it in the fields as they worked. But one of them could run back to the village and fetch Konstantina’s aunt to us in the forest. Or, if all this was too dangerous, if the occupying troops were too alert, then we would have to stay at the edge of the field above the village, and one of the women would take the message down to the aunt, and the supplies could be brought to where we were.

  But it all went off very simply. We left our friends early, before the sun was up, and had reached the village by mid-morning. We slid on our stomachs to the edge of the field. Often fields were guarded. But it was apparently a pleasant peaceful scene. The women were hoeing among the tall maize plants, talking and laughing. Konstantina called out to a woman who looked up, startled, and who then showed how well she had been taught by war—she took in the situation at once, gave us a single gesture, “I understand, keep quiet,” and worked her way slowly towards us, while keeping up her chat with another woman ten yards away. When she reached us, she and Konstantina talked in low voices, one from the field, the other from thick bushes at the edge of it. The woman’s lips scarcely moved. In this and in her quickness and her caution we could see very well the state of that village under its occupying troops. She said that with the women in the fields was the wife of a man known to be sympathetic to the Germans. It was necessary to think of a plan to get rid of her. But luck was with us. After we had lain hidden in the bushes for not more than an hour, watching the lively women working, this dangerous woman of her own accord went back to her house. She said she had bread to be baked. After that it went fast. One of the women slipped back to her house, and fetched a bundle of clothes, which was thrown into the bushes where we lay. In a few moments Konstantina had changed from a soldier to a young girl. She walked out in a full blue skirt and a white blouse and white kerchief from the trees, and joined with the women, bending and making the movements of someone who held and used a hoe. In a few minutes all the women went off together to the village, Konstantina among them.

  The field that sloped down to the village was quite empty. The maize plants were a full strong glossy green. All the trees and bushes around the field were in the lush fullness of early summer. The sky was deep and blue. It was rather hot. The maize plants were at that stage when they have reached their full growth, but still seem as if the push of the sap is sending them up. They were very straight and the stems were as crisp as sugarcane. The tassel on each plant had turned white, but only just. The acres of tall green plants were topped with waving white braided tassels, but they were a greenish white still. The cobs pushing out heavily from the stems were not filled out yet, and the soft silk that fell from the end of each cob was fresh and new. None had dried. Each cob had its tongue of gleaming ruddy silk, a welling of soft red. That morning it had rained. The tips of the arched leaves and the dangling red floss dripped great glistening raindrops. The earth smelled sweet and fresh. A lively steam went up off the field. Everything in that field was at a peak of young but mature liveliness. Even a week later, the curve would have turned, and begun to sink, with the arching leaves just tingeing yellow, the crests on the plants very hard and white, the dark red of the tassels drying and clotting. It was like looking at a wave just before it turns over and breaks.

  Down in the village some smoke went up into the blue. There was no one to be seen. It was absolutely silent. Yet the village was occupied, and we knew that two weeks ago a dozen people had been shot in the main street. They had sent supplies to the Partisans, and for this adventure today, people might be killed, if we bungled it. But things continued to go well.

  Soon a dozen women came up from the village into the field, taking their time about it. They picked up their hoes where they had dropped them. Konstantina now had a hoe and worked with the rest. I could have sworn that she was working for the pleasure of it, remembering peace and village life. She slowly hoed her way to the edge of the field, and in a moment had dropped the hoe and rolled in beside me. Under her full skirts were suspended parcels of bread, meat, sausage, even eggs. Her aunt went past, her hoe rising and falling; a package flew into the bush where we lay hidden, and I reached up to grab the precious medical supplies off the branches, like a fruit. By then Konstantina was out of her peasant woman’s garb and was a soldier again. She threw the bundle of clothes back into the field; and after a swift good-bye, good-bye, between her and the woman hoeing not six feet away, we were off and away. The raid was a success. There were no consequences to the villagers. And before that winter our people routed the enemy and the village became itself again.

  We stowed the goods carefully about us. We were now heavily laden, and it was hard to walk lightly, as we had to. We had about ten miles to go before meeting up with our group, which we knew to be making its way to a peak which we could see straight in front of us. But between us and this peak were lower mountains, rivers, valleys. It was not an easy ten miles.

  When we had gone about half way, we stopped on the flank of a mountain before the one we were making for. It was now midafternoon. The sun was in front of us and shining into our eyes. The sky was still cloudless, and it was all a glitter and a dazzle of light off sky, leaves, grass, rocks. We decided to rest for a few minutes. It was not that we were prepared to relax our guard, or to become careless. But we had finished our task, and we believed that we had not endangered our allies in the village. We sat with our backs to a big rock, and held hands like children. In front of us was a glade that opened out among very large old trees down the hillside. At one side of the glade were some low rocks, where the yellow light lay broken and dappled. A small tree at the foot of the glade was a cloud of creamy pink blossom on which butterflies clustered. It was very silent.

  Into this scene of perfect sylvan peace came a deer. Or rather, it was a question of realising that the deer had been there, looking at us, for some time. It stood about twenty yards away, near the pile of rocks. It was because the light lay broken over rock and plants and deer that we had not seen the animal. Now it was hard to understand why we had not seen it. It was a pretty sight, a golden beast, with its fur warm and rich and sunny, and its little sharp forward-pointing horns black and glossy. We stood up. I was thinking that if we had so easily overlooked a deer that stood so close, we might equally have overlooked an enemy. Probably she was thinking the same. Now I wondered for a moment if I should shoot the beast, and carry it back to camp with us. But it was always dangerous to shoot. We did not know who else was on that mountain slope—perhaps watching us, just as the deer had done, before we saw it. And we were very heavily loaded. The thought of shooting it faded. I was pleased to let it go. For it looked so very delightful standing there, its head slightly lowered, looking at us rather sideways out of its eyes. It was a small deer, not much higher than Konstantina’s waist. I was suddenly incredibly happy. This appearance of the beautiful animal seemed to me a crown to that successful day. I looked at Konstan
tina, to share the pleasure, but she was not smiling. She was serious, severe. There was a small frown between her brows that I knew well: it showed when she was puzzled, in doubt. She was looking doubtfully at this deer. The beast was much closer. I remember thinking that perhaps we had moved forward towards it without knowing we had, just as we had stood up automatically after seeing it—alerted by it, as if it were in fact an enemy. I thought that the deer’s pretty sidling prancing movements were too slight and delicate to have advanced it so fast. Then the deer was very close. It kept making the same movement, a light shaking semi-circular movement with its horns, and I felt I had to watch this movement, it was so graceful. And then, as the thought came into my mind that this small pretty beast might be dangerous, Konstantina made a sharp exclamatory warning noise, and moved in front of me, as the beast took a jump forward and sliced out with its sharp black horns.

  And then nothing happened. The deer stood there, blood dripping from its horns which now were lowered, immediately in front of Konstantina, who was standing between me and it. Then she began to slide downwards. It was as if she had decided to let herself sag at the knees. I caught her, my hands under her armpits.

  I said, “Konstantina,” in wonder, or even admonishment. I still had not quite understood that this charming creature had wounded her.

  Then her weight dragged her down to the forest floor, and I turned her face up and I saw that her eyes were closed and that blood poured from her stomach. She was greenish white.

  And now I did understand. There followed minutes of impotent anguished incompetence. In a package that lay two feet away from her were medical supplies, but there was nothing there that could staunch such a wound. Later I understood that it did not matter, that she was not saveable. I pulled up her jacket, pulled down her soldier’s trousers, exposed her stomach. The deer’s horn, sharp as a surgeon’s knife, had cut straight across her entrails. I did not think she would open her eyes again. I believed she would die at once, for her pulse had already nearly gone and her face had shrunk with death. I looked for my poison pill, for I did not want her to suffer the pain of that terrible wound, but before I had found it, she opened her eyes, smiled, closed them again and was dead.

  I laid her on the forest floor. I saw that the deer had retreated a little; it was standing near the rocks where I had seen it first. Again I wondered if I should shoot it, and this time knew if I did it would be in revenge. It did not occur to me that it might still be dangerous. It had killed Konstantina because she had stepped in front of me to save me from the slicing horns. It might again come close and kill me. But I did not think of it. I forgot the deer.

  I knew I had to bury Konstantina. I had nothing to dig a grave with. But by then I had assisted in many forest burials. I knelt down and began scooping up leaves with my hands. The light was very heavy and yellow and strong. It laid a yellow patina over Konstantina’s face.

  I went on digging. It was very easy. The leaf mould was many autumns’ work. The rich sweet-smelling crumbling soil which was the flesh of the forest leaves came up in great double handfuls. I worked on and on steadily and methodically, trying to get it done fast and well. For I knew that if I and Konstantina did not appear by ten that night, our people would send out search parties to look for us. They knew we would be slower and more vulnerable than usual—and what we carried was precious.

  It would be evening very soon … Then it was evening. By then I had dug a pit from the leaf mould about five feet deep and three wide. I slid her into the pit, so that she lay straight in it, and I lay on my stomach on the edge of the pit, and covered her face with some fresh green leaves. I laid her hands on her breast. I threw the leaf mould back over her. I was swearing and crying all the time, but silently: later I discovered I had bitten my lips through. Quite soon the place where she lay in the forest was shown only by a roughening of the surface of last autumn’s leaves. I could not mark her grave then. Standing by it I picked out three trees whose intersecting lines met here. I cut big chips of bark out of the trees, and then rubbed earth into the white gashes so that an enemy might not notice them.

  When the war was over I took a plane to Belgrade, a train to the village we had visited that day, and walked with a friend into the mountains. The friend was now a government official, and he had been a member of our group—but after I left it. We met in London. Together we found that place on the mountainside by the by now old scars on the three trees. We put up a simple headstone. On it was this inscription:

  KONSTANTINA RIBAR

  PARTISAN

  SHE GAVE HER LIFE FOR HUMANITY

  And of course, for me.

  By the time she was buried, the setting sun was straight above the peak I had to reach before moonrise. The glade was now flooded with yellow evening light. And as I picked up the packets and parcels of food and medicaments, trying to make two peoples’ burdens into a convenient load for one, I realised that all this time, two or three hours, or more, that deer had stood there, twenty paces away, among the rocks. I believe it was the sound of its hooves clicking on a stone that made me look up. It was still facing me, and its head again began to make the delicate sidling movements as I took a few steps nearer to pass it. On one of its horns was a stain—Konstantina’s blood, that might very easily have been mine. I stood still, looking at the beast. I did not understand. I could not understand why, having attacked and killed, it did not simply run away. That it should have stood there, watching me during my labour of digging out the forest floor, and then burying Konstantina, without coming nearer and making itself felt at all—I did not understand it. By now I had slid into that detached, dreamy state that follows an excess of emotion. That glowing little beast standing there, with its elegant horns lowered, apparently waiting, for no reason at all, only added to the sharp unfocus of the scene.

  I stood opposite the beast and stared at it. I was about fifteen paces away. This time I saw that the beast was a doe. And that it had a loose staggering look to it—exhaustion. I saw that it had lately given birth. Then I saw the fawn.

  The little creature lay beside the rocks facing towards the setting sun. Its softly glowing coat was full of health. Over it, as if standing on guard, was a tall plant, with clear bright leaves, that fanned and sprayed out all around the fawn, so that it lay under a fountain. The fawn was perfect, a triumph, too dazzlingly so, as if those vast mountains and forests had elected this baby animal in the sunny glade to represent them, but the scene was overcharged with meaning and with beauty.

  Then I saw that on its hide lay some dried threads of the birth liquor, and on its creamy stomach lolled the fat red birth cord, fresh and glistening. Three or four days later, the cord would be withered and gone, the fawn’s coat licked and clean, the fawn, like a human child, or like the maize plants I had seen that morning, at a crest of promise and perfection. But to witness a birth is to be admitted into Nature’s workshop, and there life and death work together. The sight of the cord, the still unlicked coat, rescued the creature from pathos, restored it to its real vulnerability, its terrible weakness. Yet its eyes regarded me quietly, without fear. For between it and me stood its mother. I think that the fawn had not yet clambered to its feet. Probably the two soldiers, coming into the glade, had interrupted the birth scene, had in some way upset the mother and baby in the ritual they had to accomplish, had thrown things out of balance. And there stood the deer, and it was only now that I saw it was standing shakily, for its back legs trembled with weakness where they were planted on the soft grass.

  I walked at a careful distance around the mother and her baby, keeping my eyes on the exhausted beast who slowly moved about to keep her lowered horns pointing at me. Behind her, the fawn lay presented in the glowing light under the plant, which was probably a fennel, or a dill.

  I could only move slowly. I was carrying something like two hundred pounds of food and medicaments. When I reached the bottom of the glade, I looked back and saw that the fawn was in the act of struggling up
on to its long slender fragile stalklike legs. The deer still watched me. And so I left the glade with its new grave, where the mother deer had one blood-dulled horn pointed at me, and the little fawn stood upright under its shining green fountain.

  DEAR DOCTOR Y,

  No, I am very sure that Charles Watkins was not at any time in Yugoslavia. I am unable to account for his insistance that he was there during the war. When I got back from the war, I was in fairly bad shape. This is what Charles and I had in common. We spent some months together in a cottage I had in Cornwall. We both talked a good deal about our experiences. This probably cured us both. Even after this lapse of time I could give you a pretty detailed account of Charles’ war, which is almost as vivid to me as “my” war. I find my memories of my two descents into Yugoslavia the most vivid of my life. If I were to forget those months, I would be forgetting events and people who formed me more fundamentally than any other. I suppose I could be regarded as lucky. I know that Charles thinks—or thought—that I was. “My” war was very different from his. I couldn’t say that I enjoyed “my” war, but it was certainly like being in a highly coloured dream, whereas I am afraid Charles’ war must have been like a long tedious nightmare. He had very much more than his fair share of boring repetitious slog, if you can agree that danger can be boring.