That the battle ebbed and flowed she knew from the changes in the sound of it — but in whose favour she could not guess. She looked at her watch. Then once more she stared at the yellow flame, feeling herself completely engulfed by it, swallowed up in the dumb fear of a new day through which she might have to live without a living David.
At long last the door opened — though she hardly noticed it — and Anna stood in the dark panel, gazing at her with a yellow weary face. Her cheeks were stained with mud and powder markings. She walked very slowly, like a drunkard. Grete cried out her name and Anna walked slowly into the cellar, blinking with fatigue.
“They’ve been driven off,” she said and, giving a great sob, threw her arms around Grete; they clutched each other. “I’m taking over for an hour,” added Anna. “You must go and have something to eat. Orders.”
As she entered the half darkness of the camp and picked her way slowly towards the canteen, Grete became aware that she was ravenously hungry. The darkness concealed most of the damage done by the attack, but here and there were some heaps of rubble, and outside the schoolroom, like a relic from some Pleistocene age, stood a large tank, still burning. Yellow flames lapped the interior, and the metal monster hummed like a giant kettle on the hob.
The long refectory was like a scene from a medieval master’s canvas: pale candlelight marked the tables and threw the faces of their occupants into relief — exhausted men and women with eyes enlarged by fear and fatigue, wolfing bread and draining great draughts of warm tea and cocoa. All around them lay items of equipment, bandoliers, gun tripods, machine-gun belts, and swathes of blood-stained bandages.
They hardly noticed as she took her place among them. They talked in low murmuring tones. Someone had a small radio on the table, at which he was working, scratching his way along the dial until at last he found a familiar call-signal and an anonymous voice which told them that, like Ras Shamir, Jerusalem was holding, Gaza was holding, Haifa was holding. A babble of voices broke out at this piece of news. Then, into the midst of the dappled darkness, walked the gaunt martinet they all recognized as Peterson.
“I want a fatigue,” she said.
Nobody spoke.
“Anybody who is not dead beat,” she added harshly, looking at them under drawn brows. “We must collect our wounded. The Arabs have been driven off; but there are many wounded of both sides out there on the battlefield. You can hear their cries from the wire. Who will volunteer?”
Weary as they were, there was something about her that was irresistible, and they rose groaning and yawning, picking up lamps and torches as they did so. Grete followed them, but at the door Peterson stopped her. The doctor stood in the darkness outside the tall doors of the refectory. Her gesture was rough, almost brutal, throwing out her strong arm across Grete’s body. Her voice was harsh and grim.
“Grete,” she said, “I have bad news for you. David…
But Grete, unable to bear the sound of the message which she knew must follow, put her hand over Peterson’s mouth.
“Please,” she cried. “Don’t say it.”
Then she turned and leaned against the door, sick and faint; she felt as if her body had shrunk to half its size. Peterson stood, breathing heavily and staring at her with a kind of grim compassion. Then she put a hand on her shoulder; Grete turned her dry eyes upon her and said in a whisper:
“Where is he?”
Peterson cleared her throat and, turning to the darkness, shouted, “Tonio, are you there?”
A huge shambling figure moved slowly into the radius of the light. The two women stared at this great sloth of a man, one of the Baltic contingent.
“You know where David is?”
The man nodded with an air of shyness, of confusion.
“Take me,” said Grete suddenly, sharply, and the huge man nodded and bobbed, touching his forelock. Peterson laid a restraining hand upon her wrist but she put it aside, saying:
“I must go to him, don’t you see?”
Neither of them saw the small figure of David’s son materialize from the darkness and come towards them, his face deathly white. He had overheard their conversation. They stood staring at each other, their white faces registering a strange doll-like surprise.
“I will come with you,” said the boy.
“No,” said Peterson.
“Yes, I must,” he said gravely, looking from one to the other.
“No,” said Grete. “Wait here.”
But the child shook his head gravely and, advancing, held out his hand to the shy blonde giant, Tonio. There was no gainsaying authority. Tonio took the small hand in his and turned; and Grete now followed them, drawing her shawl across her face, like a peasant woman in mourning.
They crossed the smashed and tangled workings with their shattered wire and found themselves out on the dark floor of the battlefield among the trampled and bloodstained water lilies where the river flew silently, swift as a dart. Everywhere there were huddles of bodies, from every side the darkness rang with voices — the low moans and whispers of the wounded and the clear voices of those who had come to succour them. Back and forth, across the dark floor of meadowland, the lamps moved like glow-worms, making little puddles of light, pausing here or there, moving, criss-crossing.
In these small pools of light they saw scenes enacted, as if from the panels of some Byzantine fresco: miniatures of a horse being cut from its traces and shot, a naked man receiving an injection, a moaning camel being pegged down on the grass. And everywhere the wounded were being selected from among the dead. Stretcher-bearers made what haste they could with their burdens across the meadows. The sky was full of stars, glimmering like precious stones. It was cold. Grete found herself shivering as much from chill as from fear. Dawn was already coming up, to judge by the swift lightening of the mountain ranges to the east.
At last they came to a fold in the banks of the river — a green strip covered with wild orchids and meadow flowers. Here Tonio quested about for a moment like a greyhound. Then he gave a grunt and pointed.
David’s sturdy form lay coiled up and very still at the bottom of a hollow of deep grass; one arm was doubled under him in an attitude which suggested some severe dislocation of shoulder and spine. The other, fully extended, was buried in the earth. The flickering light wavered and jumped upon the tremendous stillness of him as he lay there.
Tonio halted, uncertain what to do. He still held the child’s hand. But now Grete was kneeling beside her lover, turning the dark head and cradling it in her arms as she bent over him. Suddenly she looked up and, almost beside herself with astonishment, called out, but in tones so unbelieving that they carried no conviction:
“He’s breathing. He’s alive.”
They stood like figures turned to salt, Grete staring blindly up into the light of the torch, repeating “He’s alive. He’s alive.”
Then, as if the sum total of the knowledge had suddenly gone home like a bayonet thrust, the huge shaggy Balt turned and shouted across the darkness to where the stretcher-bearers moved among the dead, seeking the living. A party moved towards them and Grete saw the lights advance and brim the hollow with whiteness. Strange voices crowded about them.
An orderly knelt for a minute and listened to the feeble heartbeat in the chest wall of the fallen man — as one might listen in a cave for the voice of an oracle.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes.”