nce of flowers and somehow full of promise. The commander twisted around and realized that he was lying in his cot, in his room, except that above the cot where there used to be a ceiling, he saw a tarpaulin stretched. The chamber pot wasn’t where it should have been and the commander thought the soldier who’d failed to bring it in should be punished with at least three extra duty shifts. “The army means order, or it isn’t an army,” said the commander to himself and then he staggered out, stood by the nearest tree and began emptying his bladder. He squinted with pleasure at the relief this brought him, but suddenly he went rigid and froze. There, only sixty feet from him, was a group of journalists. He was first spotted by a woman in a red dress and red-framed glasses, and then they all turned to him and pointed their cameras and photography equipment, as well as tiny recording devices, in his direction. The commander barely had time to shove his private parts back into his pajama pants and then, as the reporters slowly but surely advanced on him, he thrust out his chest and announced, “Not one step further! You are in a zone that is off limits to civilians, and anything you record, write down, or take pictures of must receive the approval of the military authorities. You’ll be given the forms for your request for approval a little later, and there will be a tax to pay for a fee regulated by law.” “Just one question,” said a tall photographer. “Yes?” said the commander. “Do you accept credit cards?” asked the photographer. “Why, of course,” said the commander, and turned toward his room. “If you take a closer look you’ll see that Visa and MasterCard are our sponsors.” Where did all of them come from, wondered the commander, and who gave them permission to move around the barrier? He thought heads would roll for this, and then he remembered the two heads with which the soldiers had played soccer and he was swept by a terrible crush of shame. Dressed in his uniform, cap in hand, he came out again, but now on the other side of the barrier. Nowhere, however, did he see a single soldier. Not many of them were left, of course, roughly half had already been killed, but still there ought to be at least one sentry on duty. Then he thought: “What if they all deserted?” and suddenly he went pale. Then he had to admit that he wouldn’t have held it against them if they had, because they were clearly fighting a hopeless battle. His company was halved, out of the thirty soldiers only some sixteen were still alive. At least that is what his calculation had told him the day before, but that was last night, before he fell asleep, who knows what horrors had played out while he slept. Then someone’s words reached him, fragments of a conversation, and when he peered around the corner, he saw all his soldiers. They were sitting in a circle eating cornmeal mush. The junior officer was the first to catch sight of the commander, he leaped to his feet and inhaled noisily, but the commander didn’t allow him to speak; he ordered him at ease and said they should go on with their meal. “We’re eating cornmeal mush with cheese,” said some of the soldiers and the commander decided to join them. Soldiers need, as the commander knew, to see as many examples as possible of officers with the highest ranks and medals doing what they’re doing or eating what they’re eating. The rank and file was thereby shown that the officers were flesh and blood like them, and despite military hierarchy they were only human. “Real people, first and foremost,” the commander liked to say. However, this time he didn’t say it because he, too, loved cornmeal mush, especially when mixed with milk, and if there wasn’t milk then cheese would do. He turned to look in every direction and only then saw the extent of the damage from the shelling the day before. Had that been only yesterday? It might have been yesterday, thought the commander, or maybe ten days ago. All the days were the same, though the deaths differed. When he dwelt a little more on it, in fact, all deaths are the same, death comes to everyone the same way. As the poet said: “Death will come and will have your eyes.” It won’t have my eyes, thought the commander, I’d rather pluck them out myself than let death carry them off on its face. A face with nothing anyway, because death is a skeleton that walks and carries a scythe instead of crutches. Death walks with a limp, and since it’s terribly vain, it leans on the scythe as it approaches those who are on its list. It doesn’t carry the scythe to cut anyone down because death doesn’t kill, it comes to fetch those who are already dead, and the scythe simply serves to channel the flash of light in the eyes of those waiting for it, so that, blinded, they won’t have the time to see how lame death is. The commander finished his portion of mush and burped. In another situation he would have asked for seconds, but now there was no time. And besides, he wanted to know why nothing was functioning. Where, for instance, were the sentries? Were the observers in their positions? Had the radio operator attempted to reach somebody? What was the condition of the wounded, and, more important, why had they let him sleep? The commander rose slowly to his feet, cleared his throat, and waited for the soldiers to quiet down. Then again all the questions, adding in the end, as if summing it up, “Who’s at fault for this morning’s chaos?” The junior officer raised his hand and, without hesitating, said he’d made the decision because it was clear to everyone that this is a pointless battle, a battle that makes sense only if it is understood as an insane clash in which they are condemned in advance to death. “It’s obvious,” added the junior officer, “that we were sent here with one goal only: to stave off the enemy as long as possible, meaning as long as there were soldiers alive. That’s why I decided to free the soldiers of their duties, and we are prepared to surrender to the enemy as expediently as possible.” The commander, who until then had been listening closely, his head slightly tilted to the side, howled that this was treason punishable by death and reached for his gun. Before he’d had the chance to unbutton his holster, everywhere around him he heard the chink-chink sounds of weapons being cocked and found he was surrounded by barrels of the most varied assortment of guns, including a mortar. “Fine,” said the commander, “I understand.” And besides, hadn’t he himself thought the very same thing, hadn’t he said he wouldn’t hold it against any soldiers who deserted? Shooting began just then, and everyone dashed for shelter. They needed a breather to figure out that the bullets weren’t intended for them, somebody else had joined the game, renegades or rebels, or the residents of yet another country, in any case someone whom the commander and the remaining soldiers knew nothing about. The commander shouted to the radio and telegraph operator that he should try to locate the frequency of one of the enemies and do what he could to ascertain who they were. A little later, he lay down beside the operator and listened to voices that sounded Chinese, though it could have been any Asian language. The operator turned the dial to other voices, equally agitated, but by then the commander had no doubt. The language was Czech, and the commander thought back with regret to the many trips he’d taken to the former Czechoslovakia, where, for a person who had foreign currency—and the commander had a pocket full of deutsche marks and American dollars—life was cheap, beautiful women were easily accessible, not to speak of the beer. In a word, paradise. Yes, yes, old chap, said the commander to himself, that was the life and not this crap with only death to offer, as if death were something you could taste-test for a few hours and return if it didn’t suit you. But there was no answer to the question of whose side the Czechs were on, the same as a question the commander might have asked: whose side are we on? Who is who in this mess, thought the commander, and then a hand grenade, activated, rolled his way. So that’s that, thought the commander, this is it, and he decided to let it explode. Then he caught sight of the horrified gaze of a soldier, a boy, lying there next to him, his mouth opening. The commander grabbed the grenade and heaved it as far away as he could into bushes, a thicket, by the path leading to the forest. A little farther off were heard shrieks and cries, and soon a group of soldiers ran out from the thicket, hands held high. The shooting, which had begun abruptly, ended abruptly, and the soldiers trotted slowly up to the checkpoint barrier, which, throughout the melee, was unscathed. The commander rose and went to the barrier. He knew he was standing completely exposed to enemy snipers, he even felt a little itch in the places they were aiming at, his forehead and chest, but as a true soldier, and he felt he was one, he had only one thing in mind: completing the task he’d undertaken and never, remember this, he said to the kids standing by the checkpoint, never show fear. “I am not afraid of death,” said the young soldier, “but I am afraid of a gradual, inching death.” “And boring,” shouted another, “there’s nothing so awful as a boring death.” The commander felt something tugging at his pant leg and saw that the young soldier had crawled over to him. “I can’t get up,” whispered the soldier, “because I think I soiled my pants. If I’m wounded and am suffering would you put me out of my misery?” “Stop talking nonsense,” said the commander, he crouched and slipped his hand under the soldier’s belt, then turned him over on his side and moved his hand to the man’s scrotum. When he withdrew it, his hand was covered in blood and excrement. With the same hand he greeted the soldiers who, a few seconds later, hands still high in the air, trotted up to the barrier. He went over to one of them who wore symbols on his sleeve and, waving his bloody, putrid hand in front of the man’s nose, asked, “Where from?” “Where from?” repeated the soldier, and shrugged, plugging his nose and breathing through his mouth. “Not ours,” said the commander, “that much is clear.” “Not ours,” echoed the soldier, “that much is clear.” The commander turned to his soldiers and asked them what they thought, were these clowns messing with him and what should he do. He received so many suggestions that he could have spent the rest of the day weighing which was best. The soldiers, meanwhile, had chosen a suggestion that someone, sniggering, shouted out: “What about: kill the lot!” and immediately most of the others began a chant, softly at first, of “Kill! Kill!” The commander only then wiped his hand off on the grass and someone’s shirt hanging from the barrier post, and then he asked the foreign soldiers whether they had passports. They shrugged and the commander flew into a rage. He turned them, one by one, to face the enemy positions, repeating: “Go there, you’ll be better off there.” He gestured for them to keep their hands up and gently nudged the soldier who wore the insignia of rank on his sleeve. In the hush that followed, all that could be heard were their agitated voices, and soon, not even those. Whoever was hiding in the bushes on the opposite side let the group approach until they were about sixty feet away, and then a blaze of gunfire erupted as if an entire armored unit were on its way. The commander peered out just when the soldier wearing the insignia was blown toward the checkpoint, probably swept by the force of a strike, and in one endlessly brief moment his gaze found the commander’s eyes just long enough for all his bitterness and pain to spill over and for them to communicate the commander’s betrayal. “How could I have betrayed you,” said the commander aloud, “when you aren’t even my soldier?” He shivered because he knew better. Somebody surrenders to you in a plea for clemency, and you, without so much as a twinge, send them to their death. That sentence doesn’t read well, thought the commander, no matter which end you read it from. In fact, he thought something different: chaos now reigned and there’d be no turning back. A war is a game in which there are rules to be respected, and as soon as these rules are skipped, the war is no longer a game in which the foes are bent on outwitting one another. Until the First World War, thought the commander, wars were a lot like chess, even the rulers and generals saw them that way. They perched here and there on the surrounding hills and watched how their armies advanced or retreated. Until then a ritual, a theater of manners, a well-rehearsed ballet or operetta, war was now verging on chaos, arbitrary unpredictability, slaughter for slaughter’s sake. The commander knew that none of this justified him in the eyes of the soldier, in that immeasurable moment when their gazes locked. But that doesn’t mean, thought the commander, that he was flailing or had lost his will. Not at all, indeed he suddenly came alive, rushed from man to man, spurred them with encouragement, offered to be a father or mother to them, and then went over to the young soldier and told him to change his clothes before he stank up the place. Somebody might accuse us of jeopardizing the environment on top of everything else, that we’re destabilizing the ecology. He went looking for the radio and telegraph operator but, instead, came across the cook. Everything’s all set, said the cook, his stove was working, he had enough fuel, and was about to start flipping pancakes. The commander asked that two with jam be saved for him, and then he spotted the operator. There the man sat on an empty barrel, smoking. “So, do you want to go home,” asked the commander, “like those men over there?” The operator looked at him with clouded eyes, and said, “My father died.” The commander felt his shoulders and back heave under the weight of his own stupidity and shame. He wanted to say something more to the operator, maybe to himself as well, but all that came to mind was a sentence he’d read somewhere that all words were pointless in such situations, because no matter what a person said, the dead were still dead. A person should not, however, be left without hope, one should continue using one’s words. The commander whispered a curse and then asked the radio and telegraph operator how he’d heard of his father’s death. “My brother let me know,” said the operator. “Your brother?” repeated the commander. “Yes,” said the operator, “my brother.” “I didn’t know you had a brother,” said the commander, his voice shaking. “A cousin, actually, my aunt’s boy,” answered the operator. The junior officer, standing not far from them, said that when a family member dies, a soldier is permitted a four-to-seven-day furlough for the funeral. The operator said he’d go only if he were allowed to travel in his civilian clothes, because in his uniform he was a sitting duck. The commander took a deep breath and asked who would replace him as radio and telegraph operator, and the junior officer said he was prepared to take over the man’s duties. His expression was so doleful as he said this that the commander thought the junior officer was about to ask that the father’s death be ascribed to him as well. “There is no such thing as double dying,” said the commander firmly and sent off the radio operator to change his clothes. He gazed up at the sky: it was crystal clear, endlessly blue, and only here or there was it shrouded in a pale mist. The blue was somewhat paler there, but no less beautiful. What is wrong with me? thought the commander, somebody might think I’m in love. He really was the kind of person who was always falling in love, and this wasn’t just from time to time, but regularly, the way a passionate reader devours novels. His civilian librarian was glad for this and told him the poetry collections shelved in the library were surviving thanks entirely to the commander. “No one,” said the librarian, “no one reads poetry anymore!” Someone then piped up to ask whether any new poetry is being written. The librarian was about to respond and provide figures from an article written for the recent annual conference of the Librarians’ Association, but he was interrupted by an impatient reader who wanted to hear how many readers were borrowing books of poetry. “Well, the commander and…