The Book of Misrevelation

We could smell the war before it dawned over the horizon. Day after day, vinegar pushed through pores on our skin clogged by testosterone. The muggy smoke of burning soup filled lungs whenever we forgot about it cooking on the stove. The stench of diarrhoea in the latrines was impossible to withstand, and it doesn’t deserve to be described here other than to say we stole laundry pins from the villagers to put on our noses for protection just to do our business. Sheets had to hang out, smelling crisply of starch, war or no war. 

We filled our days by looking to the east, where the plains stretched as far as the eye could see. We knew they would come over with the sun one day, we knew it, we could smell it in our fear like a prophecy. We imagined the fights, man on man, or boy on boy, and in those fantasies, we always won. 

There were seven of us, seven which held a promise of invincibility, for everyone knows seven is a magic number. The number of times to forgive your neighbour his misgivings, the number of dwarfs in the Snow White story, and incidentally the biggest number of times a man ever got hit by lightning and survived before the eighth one finished the job. We were seven who swore and played cards and traded nude cut-outs from old magazines by day, who kissed their biceps and laughed and flipped the bird towards east. We were also seven who farted and cried and tossed at night, facing westward, always home, to familiar stars in the sky. 

When the war finally came, it smelled different: metallic and tangy like our instruments of hurt, and our blood, and our innards, and all of them made with iron, copper, and lead. It too smelled sour, but that was different, with shades of ammonia, if any of us ever went for number one in his trousers. But that’s not what I want to talk about, because what I truly remember and think of as the war was the one we had in our minds before the real one spilled over the plains. 

That was the year we fell in love, all seven of us, with the miller’s seven daughters. This is of course a lie, because the miller only had one daughter, who looked as pale and skinny as if she’d only ever been fed flour and rolled in it too, but history likes white lies. It doesn’t matter who we fell in love with. They are all no more. Four of us found success, relief, and a break from the trenches. Three of us remained put, three of us thrashed in rejection, and some died without tasting love. We were told it had a slight sickly tang like petroleum jelly and lotion. Those were pampered girls we went for, girls who wore lip gloss and coated their bodies in cream before letting their legs shine from under short skirts. They invited us into the city and into themselves and we took both and ate with appetite.

The city kept itself too busy to feel the same fear we feared constantly, a daily growl in our background. If only they could walk out into the plains, they would have understood, and they wouldn’t have made fun of us, those who were too old, too crooked, or too important to fight. If only they could hear the silence to the east, one that not only lay over the ground, but sucked in any stray sounds much as the whale did to Jonah, if only, then they would have known for once and for ever.

Those were the seven of us: number one, which is not I but the boy who led the pack, and may the record reflect he got lucky and died in the first and only Battle of the Plains. He didn’t appear to be scared but reeked badly of panic. If ever one of us faltered, he could talk us back into human shape again. His teeth chattered while he slept.

Number two. Our jester, who perhaps had no fear, for his sweat was fresh as the water in the nearby streams that cut through the fields around us. He also found love, and they died days apart. He was licked by a bullet and the gangrene spread faster than the leg could be cut. She died an easier way, in an air raid, the ceiling of her house caving in on her ginger locks.

Number three. This was me, who ranked as a deputy. I wasn’t smart enough to lead, funny enough to entertain, or handsome enough to impress. I only found my spot in a woman’s bed after the war, which I have hereby survived, the only one in the pack. I have seen six faces turn off. Some of them died like bonfires, slowly and with some glow dancing under the skin for a while before they finally went cold. Some of them died like fires too, but fires in rain, sizzling and dissolving in an instant. 

Number four and five were brothers, and they both died under caterpillar treads of unfriendly tanks. Their legs had been blown off, but they watched the giant approach, and I watched with them, and what my eyes couldn’t believe, my stomach still remembers. One of them was much smoother than the other, and he had better traction with girls, so he had more than one affair in the short time we were stationed near the town. He started in the village and worked his way up into the city. And the other one, his face I do not recall. 

Number six. A bookie, thrown into the fight as if by mistake, dazed and confused and ill-fitting much like our boots. The only one I didn’t see die, only what was left of him, which I recognised by the long-fingered hands as there was no head to speak of. 

Number seven. My own brother. The one I never acknowledged in public, and only at night, I would bring him bread I had saved from supper. The one I ridiculed together with the remaining five, and tease him about being blown up before any of us. Too young to be in the pack, but too young to fend for himself. Pitied so much he became the fourth one to find out what a woman had to offer, out of sheer sympathy. My brother in an awkward spot, position seven out of seven, with three between us. I wish he would have died in my arms, but he didn’t, but may the record reflect despite that: my brother died in my arms, I wiped his face and closed his eyes for him, and a grave was dug and hymns sung.

The moral of this story is none at all, for this isn’t a story but an enumeration. What I do on days where the smells follow me is sit down to write like so, bring my boys back into life in some minor detail, and lie to myself (and the record) about the things I want to be different. Sometimes I scrawl of us seven at the pub, getting drunk on a single pint. Sometimes I write of the girls we all married, our first loves or those we comforted after the war, and those who tried to fix us in return. Perhaps one day I will write about my brother some more, and how he takes care of me now I can barely walk, and how his grandchildren warm my old lap. But that isn’t a story for today. It isn’t a story at all.