1942.03飞往阿拉斯。三

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Flight to Arras. Iii
By Antoine De Saint Exupéry
MARCH 1942 ISSUE
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(Translated by Lewis Galantière)

[IN this true story of the French Air Force in May 1940, Captain Saint-Exupéry describes the experiences of his own decimated escadrille (six planes out of twenty-three survive), and more particularly what is happening to his plane, Dutertre his observer, his gunner, and himself on a dangerous sortie over Arras. Here in prose of epic quality is the story of man’s courage in the face of defeat. The chapters describing the take-off and the chaos within the French lines appeared in the Atlantic for January and February. — THE EDITOR]
XIX
‘172°'


‘Right! 172°.’

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Call it one seventy-two. Epitaph: ‘Maintained his course accurately on 172°.’ How long will this crazy challenge go on? I am flying now at two thousand three hundred feet beneath a ceiling of heavy clouds. If I were to rise a mere hundred feet Dutertre would be blind. Thus we are forced to remain visible to the anti-aircraft batteries and play the part of an archer’s target for the Germans. Two thousand feet is a forbidden altitude. Your machine serves as a mark for the whole plain. You drain the cannonade of a whole army. You are within range of every calibre. You dwell an eternity in the field of fire of each successive weapon. You are not shot at with cannon but beaten with a stick. It is as if a thousand sticks were used to bring down a single walnut.

I had given a bit of thought to this problem. There is no question of a parachute. When the stricken plane dives to the ground the opening of the escape hatch takes more seconds than the dive of the plane allows. Opening the hatch involves seven turns of a crank that sticks. Besides, at full speed the hatch warps and refuses to slide.

That’s that. The medicine had to be swallowed some day. I always knew it. Meanwhile, the formula is not complicated: stick to 172°.


‘One seventy-four.’

‘Right! One seventy-four.’

Call it one seventy-four. Must change that epitaph.

‘Captain, they are beginning to fire.’

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I glanced at the altimeter: two thousand one hundred and fifty feet. Clouds at two thousand three hundred. Well. Nothing to be done about it. What astonishes me is that beneath my cloud bank the world is not black, as I had thought it would be. It is blue. Marvelously blue. Twilight has come, and all the plain is blue.

‘One sixty-eight.’

‘Right! One sixty-eight.’

Call it one sixty-eight. Interesting, that the road to eternity should be zigzag. And so peaceful! The earth here looks like an orchard. A moment ago it seemed to me skeletal, inhumanly desiccated. But I am flying low in a sort of intimacy with it. There are trees, some standing isolated, others in clusters. You meet them. And green fields. And houses with red tile roofs.

‘One seventy-five.’

My epitaph has lost a good deal of its laconic dignity: ‘Maintained his course on 172°, 174°, 168°, 175°. . .’ I shall seem a very versatile fellow. What’s that? Engine coughing? Growing cold. I shut the ventilators of the hood. Good. Time to change over to the reserve tanks. I pull the lever. Have I forgotten anything? I glance at the oil gauge. Everything shipshape.

‘Beginning to get a bit nasty, Captain.’

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Beginning to get nasty. And yet I cannot help being astonished by the blue of the evening. It is so extraordinary. The color is so deep. And those fruit trees, plum trees, perhaps, flowing by. I am part of the countryside now. I am a marauder who has jumped over the wall. I am running through the wet alfalfa, stealing plums. This is an odd war. A war nostalgic and beautifully blue. I got lost somehow, and strayed into this strange country in my old age. . . .

‘Zigzag, Captain!’

Here is a new game. You kick the rudder bar with your right foot and then your left, and the anti-aircraft battery can’t touch you. When, as a child, I fell down I used to bruise myself and raise swellings. I am sure my nurse used to cure me with compresses of arnica. I am going to need arnica awfully, I think.

Forward of my plane I saw suddenly three lance-strokes aimed at my machine. Three long brilliant vertical twigs. The paths of tracer bullets fired from a small-calibre gun. They were golden. Suddenly in the blue of the evening I had seen the spurting glow of a threebranched candlestick.

‘Captain! Firing very fast to port. Hard down!’

I kicked my rudder.

‘Getting worse!’

Worse?

Yes, it is getting worse; but I feel none of those things I thought I should feel when facing the claws of these shooting stars.

I am in a country that moves my heart. Day is dying. On the left I see great slabs of light among the showers. They are like panes in a cathedral window. Almost within reach, I can all but handle the good things of the earth. There are those plum trees with their plums. There is that earth-smelling earth. It must be wonderful to tramp over damp earth.

‘Arras!’

Yes. Very far ahead. But Arras is not a town. Arras thus far is no more than a red plume against a blue background of night. Against a background of storm. For unmistakably, forward on the left, an awful squall is collecting. Twilight alone would not explain this half-light. It wants blocks of clouds to filter a glow so sombre. The flame of Arras is bigger now. You wouldn’t call it the flame of a conflagration. A conflagration spreads like a chancre surrounded by no more than a narrow edge of living flesh. That red plume permanently alight is the gleam of a lamp that might be smoking a bit. It is a flame without flicker, sure to last, well fed with oil. I can feel it moulded and kneaded out of a compact substance, something almost solid that the wind stirs from time to time and bends as it bends a tree. That’s it: a tree. Arras is caught up in the mesh of roots of this tree. And all the pith of Arras, all the substance of Arras, all the treasures of Arras leap, now become sap, to nourish this tree.

I can see that occasionally top-heavy flame lose its equilibrium to right or left, belch forth an even blacker cloud of smoke, and then collect itself again. But I am still unable to make out the town.

The whole war is summed up in that glow. Dutertre says that it is getting worse. Perched up forward, he can see better than I can. Nevertheless, I am astonished by a sort of indulgence shown us: this venomous plain sends forth few stars.

‘Captain! Captain! I’ve never seen anything like it!’

Nor have I.

Where now is my vulnerability? Unknown to myself, I had been hoping. . . .

XX
Despite my lack of altitude, I had been hoping. Despite the tank parks, despite the flame over Arras. Desperately, I had been hoping.

I had been using every trick in my bag. When Dutertre said to me, ‘It’s getting worse,’ I used even that threat as a source of hope. We were at war: necessarily, then, there had to be evidence of war. The evidence was no more than a few streaks of light. ‘ Is this your terrible danger of death over Arras? Don’t make me laugh!’

I myself could not but be deceived — since this whole world was snug and verdant, since the wet slate and tile shone so cordially, since from minute to minute nothing changed or promised to change. Since we three, Dutertre, the gunner, and I, were men walking across fields, sauntering idly home without so much as the need to raise our collars, so little was it raining. Since here at the heart of the German zone nothing stood forth that was really worth telling about; whence it must follow that, farther on, the war need not of necessity be different from this. Since it seemed that the enemy had scattered and melted into the wide and rural plain, standing perhaps at the rate of one soldier to a house, one soldier to a tree, one of whom, remembering now and then the war, would fire. The order had been drummed into the fellow’s ears: ‘Fire on all enemy planes.’ But he had been daydreaming, and the order had been dimmed by the dream. He let fly his three rounds without much expectation of results. Thus at dusk I used to shoot ducks that meant very little to me if the evening invited my soul. I would fire while talking about something else. It hardly disturbed the ducks.

How vulnerable I was! Yet it seemed to me that my very vulnerability was a

trap, a means of cajoling the enemy: ‘Why fire? Your friends are sure to bring me down a little farther on.’ And they would shrug their shoulders: ‘Go break your neck somewhere else.’ They were leaving the chore to the next battery— because they were anxious not to miss their turn at the soup, were finishing their funny story, or were simply enjoying the evening breeze. I was taking advantage of their negligence, and I was saved by the seeming coincidence that all of them at once appeared to be weary of war. And why not? Already I was thinking vaguely that from soldier to soldier, squad to squad, village to village,

I should get through this sortie. After all, what were we but a passing plane in the evening sky? Not enough to make a man raise his eyes.

Of course I hoped to get back. But I could feel at the same time that something was in the air. You are sentenced; a penalty hangs over you; but the gaol in which you are locked up continues silent. You cling to that silence. Every second that drops is like the one that went before. There is no reason why the second about to drop should change the world. Such a task is too heavy for a single second. Each second that follows safeguards your silence. Already this silence seems perpetual.

But the step of him who must come sounds in the corridor.

Something in this countryside suddenly exploded. So a log that seemed burnt out crackles suddenly and shoots forth its sparks. How did it happen that the whole plain started up at the same moment? When spring comes, all the trees at once drop their seed. Why this sudden springtime of arms? Why this luminous flood rising towards us and, of a sudden, universal?

My first feeling was that I had been careless. I had ruined everything. A wink, a single gesture is enough to topple you from the tightrope. A mountain climber coughs, and he releases an avalanche. Once he has released the avalanche, all is over.

We had been swaying heavily through this blue swamp already drowned in night. We had stirred up this silent slime; and now, in tens of thousands, it was sending towards us its golden bubbles. A nation of jugglers had burst into dance. A nation of jugglers was dribbling its projectiles in tens of thousands in our direction. Because they came straight at us, they appeared at first to be motionless. Like colored balls which jugglers seem not so much to fling into the air as to release upwards, they rose in a lingering ascension. I could see those tears of light flowing towards me through a silence as of oil. That silence in which jugglers perform.

Each burst of a machine gun or a rapid-fire cannon shot forth hundreds of these phosphorescent bullets that followed one another like the beads of a rosary. A thousand elastic rosaries strung themselves out towards the plane, drew themselves out to the breaking point, and burst at our height. When, missing us, the string went off at a tangent, its speed was dizzying. The bullets were transformed into lightning. And I flew drowned in a crop of trajectories as golden as stalks of wheat. I flew at the centre of a thicket of lancestrokes. I flew threatened by a vast and dizzying flutter of knitting needles. All the plain was now bound to me, woven and wound round me, a coruscating web of golden wire.

I leaned towards the earth and saw those storied levels of luminous bubbles rising with the tardy movement of veils of fog. I saw as I stared the slow vortex of seed, swirling like the husk of threshed grain. And when I raised my head I saw on the horizon those stacks of lances. Guns firing? Not at all! I am attacked by cold steel. These are swords of light.

I feel . . . certainly not in danger! Dazzled I am by the luxury that envelops me.

What’s that!

I was jolted nearly a foot out of my seat. The plane has been rammed hard, I thought. It has burst, been ground to bits. . . . But it hasn’t; it hasn’t. . . . I can still feel it responsive to the controls. This was but the first blow of a deluge of blows. Yet there was no sign of explosion below. The smoke of the heavy guns had probably blended into the dark ground.

I raised my head and stared. What I saw was without appeal.

XXI
I had been looking on at a carnival of light. The ceiling had risen little by little and I had been unaware of an intervening space between the clouds and me. I had been zigzagging along a line of flight dotted by ground batteries. Their tracer bullets had been spraying the air with wheat-colored shafts of light. I had forgotten that at the top of their flight the shells of those batteries must burst. And now, raising my head, I saw around and before me those rivets of smoke and steel driven into the sky in the pattern of towering pyramids.

I was quite aware that those rivets were no sooner driven than all danger went out of them, that each of those puffs possessed the power of life and death only for a fraction of a second. But so sudden and simultaneous was their appearance that the image flashed into my mind of conspirators intent upon my death. Abruptly their purpose was revealed to me, and I felt on the nape of my neck the weight of an inescapable reprobation.

Muffled as those explosions reached me, their sound covered by the roar of my engines, I had the illusion of an extraordinary silence. Those vast packets of smoke and steel, moving soundlessly upward and behind me with the lingering flow of icebergs, persuaded me that, seen in their perspective, I must be virtually motionless. I was motionless in the dock before an immense assizes. The judges were deliberating my fate, and there was nothing I could plead. Once again the timelessness of suspense seized me. I thought, — I was still able to think, — ‘They are aiming too high,’ and I looked up in time to see straight overhead, swinging away from me as it with reluctance, a swarm of black flakes that glided like eagles. Those eagles had given me up. I was not to be their prey. But even so, what hope was there for me?

The batteries that continued to miss me continued also to readjust their aim. New walls of smoke and steel continued to be built up round me as I flew. The ground-fire was not seeking me out, it was closing me in.

‘Dutertre! How much more of this is there?’

‘Stick it out three minutes, Captain. Looks bad, though.’

‘Think we’ll get through?’

‘Not on your life!’

There never was such muck as this murky smoke, this mess as grimy as a heap of filthy rags. The plain was blue. Immensely blue. Deep-sea blue.

What was a man’s life worth between this blue plain and this foul sky? Ten seconds, perhaps; or twenty. The shock of the exploding shells set all the sky shuddering. When a shell burst very near, the explosion rumbled along the plane like rock dropping through a chute. And when for a moment the roar stopped, the plane rang with a sound that was almost musical. Like a sigh, almost; and the sigh told us that the plane had been missed. Those bursts were like the thunder: the closer they came, the simpler they were. A rumble meant distance, a clean bang! meant that we had been squarely hit by a shell fragment. The tiger does not do a messy job on the ox it brings down. The tiger sets its claws into the ox without skidding. It takes possession of the ox. Each square hit by a fragment of shell sank into the hull of the plane like a claw into living flesh.

‘Anybody hurt?’

‘Not I!’

‘Gunner! You all right?’

‘O.K., sir!’

Somehow those explosions, though I find I must mention them, did not really count. They drummed upon the hull of the plane as upon a drum. They pierced my fuel tanks. They might as easily have drummed upon our bellies, pierced them instead. What is the belly but a kind of drum? But who cares what happens to his body? Extraordinary, how little the body matters.

I used to wonder as I was dressing for a sortie what a man’s last moments were like. And each time, life would give the lie to the ghosts I evoked. Here I was, now, naked and running the gauntlet, unable so much as to guard my head by arm or shoulder from the crazy blows raining down upon me. I had always assumed that the ordeal, when it came, would be an ordeal that concerned my flesh. My flesh alone, I assumed, would be subjected to the ordeal. It was unavoidable that in thinking of these things I should adopt the point of view of my body. Like all men, I had given it a good deal of time. I had dressed it, bathed it, fed it, quenched its thirst. I had identified myself with this domesticated animal. I had taken it to the tailor, the surgeon, the barber. I had been unhappy with it, cried out in pain with it, loved with it. I had said of it, ‘This is me.’ And now of a sudden my illusion vanished. What was my body to me? A kind of flunky in my service. Let but my anger wax hot, my love grow exalted, my hatred collect in me, and that boasted solidarity between me and my body was gone.

Your son is in a burning house. Nobody can hold you back. You may burn up; but do you think of that? You are ready to bequeath the rags of your body to any man who will take them. You discover that what you set so much store by is trash. You would sell your hand, if need be, to give a hand to a friend. It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you. Your body belongs to you: it is not you. Are you about to strike an enemy? No threat of bodily harm can hold you back. You? It is the death of your enemy that is you. You? It is the rescue of your child that is you. In that moment you exchange yourself against something else; and you have no feeling that you lost by the exchange. Your members? Tools. A tool snaps in your hand: how important is that tool? You exchange yourself against the death of your enemy, the rescue of your child, the recovery of your patient, the perfection of your theorem. Here is a pilot of my Group wounded and dying. A true citation in general orders would read: ‘Called out to his observer, “They’ve got me! Beat it! And for God’s sake don’t lose those notes!” ‘ What matters is the notes, the child, the patient, the theorem. Your true significance becomes dazzlingly evident. Your true name is duty, hatred, love, child, theorem. There is no other you than this.

The flames of the house, of the diving plane, strip away the flesh; but they strip away the worship of the flesh too. Man ceases to be concerned with himself: he recognizes of a sudden what he forms part of. If he should die, he would not be cutting himself off from his kind, but making himself one with them. He would not be losing himself, but finding himself. This that I affirm is not the wishful thinking of a moralist. It is an everyday fact. It is a commonplace truth. But a fact and a truth hidden under the veneer of our everyday illusion. Dressing and fretting over the fate that might befall my body, it was impossible for me to see that I was fretting over something absurd. But in the instant when you are giving up your body, you learn to your amazement — all men always learn to their amazement — how little store you set by your body. It would be foolish to deny that during all those years of my life when nothing insistent was prompting me, when the meaning of my existence was not at stake, it was impossible for me to conceive that anything might be half so important as my body. But here in this plane I say to my body (in effect), ‘One way and another, I have dragged you through life to this point; and here I discover that you are of no importance.'

Man does not die. Man imagines that it is death he fears; but what he fears is the unforeseen, the explosion. What man fears is himself, not death. There is no death when you meet death. When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.

‘Captain!’

‘What’s up?’

‘Getting hot!’

‘ Gunner! ‘

‘Er . . . yes, sir.’

‘What—’

My question vanished in the shock of another explosion.

‘Dutertre!’

‘Captain?’

‘Hurt?’

‘No.’

‘You, gunner!'

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I wa —’

I seemed to be running the plane into a bronze wall. A voice in my ear said, ‘ Boy! oh, boy! ‘ as I looked up to measure the distance to the overhanging clouds. The sharper the angle at which I stared, the more densely the murky tufts seemed to be piled up. Seen straight overhead, the sky was visible between them, they hung curved and scattered, forming a gigantic coronet in the air.

A man’s thigh muscles are incredibly powerful. I bore down upon the rudder bar with all my strength and sent the plane shuddering and skidding at right angles to our line of flight. The coronet swung overhead and slid down on my right. I had got away from one of the batteries and left it firing wasted packets of shell. But before I could bring my other thigh into play the ground battery had set straight what hung askew — the coronet of smoke was back again. Once more I bore down, and again the plane groaned and swayed in this swampy sky. All the weight of my body was on that bar, and the machine had swung, had skidded squarely to starboard. The coronet curved now above me on the left.

Would we last it out? But how could we! Each time that I brought the ship brutally round, the deluge of lancestrokes followed me before I could jerk back again. Each time the coronet was set back into place and the shell bursts shook up the plane anew. And each time, when I looked down, I saw again that same dizzyingly slow ascension of golden bubbles that seemed to be accurately centred upon my plane. How did it happen that we were still whole? I began to believe in us. ‘ I am invulnerable, after all,’ I said to myself. ‘I am winning. From second to second, I am more and more the winner.’

‘Anybody hurt yet?’

‘Nobody.’

They were unhurt. They were invulnerable. They were victorious. I was the owner of a winning team. And from that moment each explosion seemed to me not to threaten us but to temper us. Each time, for a fraction of a second, it seemed to me that my plane had been blown to bits; but each time it responded anew to the controls and I nursed it along like a coachman pulling hard on the reins. I began to relax, and a wave of jubilation went through me. There was just time enough for me to feel fear as no more than a physical stiffening induced by a loud crash, when instantly after each buffet a wave of relief went through me. I ought to have felt successively the shock, then the fear, then the relief; but there wasn’t time. What I felt was the shock, then instantly the relief. Shock, relief. Fear, the intermediate step, was missing. And during the second that followed the shock I did not live in the expectancy of death in the second to come, but in the conviction of resurrection born of the second just passed. I lived in a sort of slipstream of joy, in the wake of my jubilation. A prodigiously unlooked-for pleasure was flowing through me. It was as if, with each second that passed, life was being granted me anew. As if with each second that passed my life became a thing more vivid to me. I was living. I was alive. I was still alive. I was the source of life itself. I was thrilled through with the intoxication of living. ‘The heat of battle’ is a familiar phrase; the heat of living is a truer one. ‘I wonder,’ I said to myself, ‘if those Germans below who are firing at us know that they are creating life within us?’

All my tanks had been pierced, both gas and oil. Otherwise we seemed to be sound. Dutertre called out that he was through, and once again I looked up and calculated the distance to the clouds. I raised the nose of the ship, and once again I sent the plane zigzagging as I climbed. Once again I cast a glance earthwards. What I saw I shall not forget. The plane was crackling everywhere with short wicks of spurting flame — the rapid-fire cannon. The colored balls were still floating upward through an immense blue aquarium of air. Arras was glowing dark red like iron on the anvil, a flame fed by subterranean stores, by the sweat of men, the inventions of men, the arts of men, the memories and patrimony of men, all these braided in the ruddy ascension of that single plume that changed them into fire and ash, borne away on the wind.

Already I was flying through the first packets of mist. Golden arrows still rose and pierced the belly of the cloud, and just as the cloud closed round me I caught through an opening my last glimpse of that scene. For a single instant the flame over Arras rose up glowing in the night like a lamp in the nave of a cathedral. The lamp that was Arras was burning in the service of a cult, but at a price. By tomorrow it would have consumed Arras and itself have been consumed.

‘Everything all right, Dutertre?’

‘First rate, captain. Two-forty, please. We shan’t be able to come down out of this cloud for about twenty minutes. Then I’ll pick up a landmark along the Seine somewhere.’

‘Everything all right, gunner?’

‘Everything fine, sir.’

‘Not too hot for you, was it?’

‘No, I guess not, sir.’

Hard for him to tell. But he was feeling fine. I thought of Gavoille’s gunner. In the days when this was still a very odd war, we used to do long-distance reconnaissance over Germany. There was a night over the Rhine when eighty searchlights picked up Gavoille’s plane and built a giant basilica round it. The anti-aircraft began to fire, and suddenly Gavoille heard his gunner talking to himself— for the intercom is hardly a private line. The man was muttering a dialogue of one: ‘Think you’ve been around, do you? I’ll tell you something you’ve never seen! ‘ He was feeling fine, that gunner.

I flew on, drawing deep slow breaths. I filled my lungs to the bottom. It was wonderful to breathe again. There were many things I was going to find out about. First I thought of Alias. No, that’s not true. I thought first of my host, my farmer. I still looked forward to asking him how many instruments he thought a pilot had to watch. Sorry, but I am stubborn about some things. One hundred and three. He would never guess. Which reminds me. When your tanks have been pierced, it does no harm to have a look at your gauges. Wonderful tanks! Their rubber coatings had done their job; automatically, they had contracted and plugged the holes made by bullets and shell splinters. I had a look at my stabilizers too. This cloud we flew in was a storm cloud. It shook us up pretty badly.

‘Think we can come down now?’

‘Ten minutes more. Better wait another ten minutes.’

Of course I could wait another ten minutes. . . . Yes, I had thought of Alias. Was he still expecting us, I wondered? The other day we had been half an hour late. A half hour is generally longer than you ought to be: it means trouble. I had landed and run to join the Group, who were at table. I had opened the door and fallen into a chair beside Alias. At that moment he had a cluster of spaghetti on his fork and was preparing to tuck it away. He jumped, took a good look at me, and sat perfectly still, the noodles hanging from his fork.

‘Well, I . . . Glad to see you,’ he said.

And he stuffed the noodles into his mouth.

The major has one serious fault, to my mind. He insists stubbornly on examining his pilots about their sorties. He will examine me. He will sit looking at me with embarrassing patience, waiting for me to spin out my commonplace observations. He will have armed himself with paper and pencil, determined not to lose a single drop of the elixir I shall presumably have brought back.

Intelligence is Dutertre’s business, not mine. He is the observer; I am the pilot. From where he sits he can see straight below. He sees lots of things — lorries, barges, tanks, soldiers, cannon, horses, railway stations, trains, station masters. From where I sit I see the world at an angle. I see clouds, sea, rivers, mountains, sun. I see roughly, and get only a general impression.

‘Major, you know as well as I do that a pilot . . .’

‘Come, come, Saint-Ex! You do see some things, after all.’

I . . . Oh, yes! Flames. Villages burning. Doesn’t the major think that interesting?

‘Nonsense! The whole country is on fire. What else?’

Why must Alias be so cruel?

XXII
What I bring back from this sortie is not matter for a report. When Alias examines me I shall flunk like a schoolboy standing before all the class at a blackboard. I shall seem very unhappy, and yet I shall not be unhappy. Unhappiness is behind me. It fled in that instant when the shell bursts began to drum upon the plane. Had I turned back one second before, I should have missed knowing myself.

I should never have known the flood of affection that at this moment fills my heart. I am going back to my own kind. I am going home. I am like a housewife whose shopping is done and who is on her way home, her mind on the savory dinner with which she is about to delight her family. Her market basket swings on her arm to left and right.

Even in the belly of this cloud I am on my way home from market. The major was right, after all. When he sent us off in a voice that seemed to say, ‘And then you take the first turn to the right, where you will see a tobacco shop,’ his voice was pitched on the right note. My conscience is at rest. I have the major’s matches in my pocket — or more truly, Dutertre has them in his pocket. How Dutertre manages to remember what he saw, I cannot imagine. But that is his business. My mind is on more serious things. We shall land; and if the enemy spare us the nuisance of a sudden rush to still another field, I shall challenge Lacordaire and beat him at chess. He hates to lose. So do I. But I shall win.

Yesterday, be it said without dishonor, Lacordaire got tight. At least, a little tight. He had got tight in order to console himself. Coming in from a sortie, he had forgotten to release his landing gear and had set the plane down on her belly. Unfortunately, Alias had seen him do it; but he had not said a word. And Lacordaire, a pilot of long experience, had stood by, waiting for Alias to turn upon him. He had stood by hoping that Alias would curse him. A violent tongue-lashing would have done him good. It would have allowed him to explode too. It would have allowed him to get off his chest the rage against himself that was swelling in him. But Alias had merely shaken his head sadly. Alias’s mind was on the plane, not on the pilot. To the major, this accident was a kind of anonymous misfortune, a statistical tax levied on the Group. It was the effect of one of those moments of absent-mindedness that attack even the most experienced pilots. It was an injustice, and Lacordaire was its victim. Except this blunder, Lacordaire’s professional record was clean. Alias knew this, and all that bothered him was the plane. Automatically, without thinking, he turned to Lacordaire and asked him how bad he thought the damage was. And I could feel Lacordaire’s pent-up rage rise a degree at the question. You put your hand cordially on the torturer’s shoulder and say to him, ‘How badly do you think your victim is suffering?’ Truly, the human heart is unfathomable. That friendly hand soliciting the torturer’s sympathy exasperates the torturer. He flings a black look at the victim and is sorry he hasn’t finished her off.

I am on my way home. Group 2-33 is my home. And I understand my kind. I cannot be mistaken about Lacordaire. Lacordaire cannot be mistaken about me. Nothing is stronger than the community of feeling between us, the feeling that goes through me when I say, ‘We of Group 2-33.’ The particles, the fragments that we are, collect and possess meaning in the fact of the Group.

Flying in the cloud, I think of Gavoille and Hochedé. I am stirred by the community of feeling that binds me to them. I wonder about Gavoille. What sort of people does he come of? There is a wonderful earthy substance in Gavoille. A memory sweeps suddenly over me and fills me with warmth. At Orconte, Gavoille too was billeted with a peasant. One day he said to me, ‘The farmer’s wife killed a pig the other day. She wants us to try her blood-sausage.’

Three of us sat eating the wonderful black and crackling skin — Gavoille, Israel, and I. There was a crock of white wine to wash it down. Gavoille said as we ate, ‘I bought this for the farmer’s wife, thinking she’d like it. Write something in it for her.’ It was a copy of one of my books. I was not in the least embarrassed. I wrote in it with pleasure, to please them both. Gavoille sat scratching his leg. Israel was stuffing his pipe. The farmer’s wife seemed pleased to have a book inscribed by an author. The kitchen was redolent of the sausage. I was a little tight, for the white wine was heady.

I did not feel in the least strange, despite the fact of inscribing a book — a thing which in other circumstances has always bothered me. I did not feel at all out of place. Despite the book, I did not think of myself either as an author or as an outsider. I was not an outsider. Israel looked on and smiled pleasantly as I wrote my name. Gavoille went on scratching his leg. And I felt grateful for the way they took it. That book might have made them look upon me as an outsider. Yet it didn’t. I was still one of them.

The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate. I am fed by the quality that resides in those who participate with me. That quality is something the men of the Group never think of — not out of humility, but because they do not stoop to measure it. Gavoille does not wonder about himself, nor does Israel. Each of these men is a web woven of his job, his trade, his duty. That smoking sausage, eaten in these circumstances, is woven into that web. The presence of these men is dense, full of meaning, and it warms my heart. I am able to sit with them in silence. To drink my white wine with them. To sign my book without thereby cutting myself off from them. Nothing in the world is strong enough to wreck this fellowship.

I have mentioned before that because I was a writer I might have enjoyed certain advantages, certain liberties in this war. I might for example have been free to leave Group 2-33 the day I no longer approved of what I was ordered to do. But that kind of liberty I reject almost with terror. It is no more than the liberty to be a bystander, which is to say the liberty not to exist. There is no growth except in the acceptance of obligations.

We in France all but died of intelligence unsupported by substance. Gavoille exists. He loves, hates, rejoices, complains. He is shaped and heightened by the strands woven together and constituting his being. And exactly as, sitting with him at table, I took pleasure from the crisp sausage we shared, so I take pleasure from the obligations of the craft that fuse us of the Group into a common being. I love Group 2-33. I do not love it with the love of a spectator looking on at a handsome spectacle. I don’t give a button for spectacles. I love Group 2-33 because I am part of it and it is part of me, because it nourishes me and I contribute to nourishing it.

And now, flying home from Arras, I am more than ever interwoven with Group 2-33. I have formed still another tie with it. I have intensified in me that feeling of communion with it that is to be relished and left unspoken. Each of us had risked his life in more or less the same fashion. Israel had disappeared. It seemed pretty certain that in the course of today’s outing I too should disappear. What have I earned by this swing round the sky except a slightly better right to sit down at their table and be silent with them? The right is dearly bought; but it is a dear right. It is the right to be, and thus to escape nonbeing.

Yet the notion that I shall stammer when, some minutes from now, Alias will put his questions, makes me go red. I shall feel ashamed, I know. The major will think me a little idiotic. The shame that I feel already by anticipation is genuine. Yet . . . Once again I had taken off—this time to Arras—in search of the proof of my good faith. I had risked my flesh in this sortie. I had risked it being pretty sure that I should lose it. I had given everything to the rules of the game in order to turn them somehow into something other than the rules of the game. And this being so, I have won the right to appear sheepish when the major examines me. The right, that is, to participate. To be interwoven with the rest. To commune with them. To give and receive. To be more than myself. To possess this plenitude that swells so powerfully within me. To feel the love that I feel for the Group, a love that is not an impulse from without but is something inward and never to be manifested — except at a farewell dinner. At a farewell dinner you are sure to be a little drunk, and the benevolence born of alcohol is sure to make you lean towards your friends as a tree whose boughs bend with gifts. My love of the Group has no need of definition. It is woven of bonds. It is my substance. I am of the Group, and the Group is of me.

And as I think of the Group, it is impossible for me not to think of Hochedé. Hochedé made a total gift of himself to this war. More, probably, than any of us, Hochedé dwells permanently in that state which I have striven so hard to attain to. Hochedé has arrived at the goal towards which the rest of us tend, the goal I seek to reach.

Hochedé is a former sergeant recently promoted second lieutenant. I can imagine that his culture is slight. He is unable to shed any light upon himself. But he is constructed, he is complete. The word ‘duty’ loses all bombast when applied to Hochedé. Any man would be happy to accept his duty as Hochedé does.

When I think of Hochedé, I reproach myself all my petty renunciations, my negligences, my laziness, and my moments of intellectualism, which is to say skepticism. This is not a sign in me of virtue but of intelligent jealousy. I should like to exist as completely as Hochedé does. A tree solidly planted on its roots is a beautiful thing. The permanence of Hochedé is a beautiful thing. Hochedé could never disappoint.

Volunteer? We were all volunteers on all our sorties. For the rest of us, the reason was a vague need to believe in ourselves. By volunteering, we outdid ourselves a little. Hochedé was a volunteer by nature. He was, in essence, this war. The fact was so evident that when a plane was bound to be sacrificed the major thought automatically of Hochedé. ‘Look here, Hochedé. . . .’ Hochedé was steeped in this war as a monk is steeped in religion. For whom did he fight? For himself, since he was interwoven with the war, with the Group, with France. Hochedé was fused together with a certain substance, and that substance, which was his own significance, had to be saved. At Hochedé’s level, life and death are somewhat the same thing. Hochedé was already part of both. Perhaps without realizing it, he hardly feared death. Stick it out; make others stick it out — that was what mattered. For Hochedé, life and death had become reconciled.

I am part of Israel, of Gavoille, of Hochedé, and they are part of me. I am part of Group 2-33, and it of me. I am part of my country, and it of me. My country and I are one. And all the men of Group 2-33 are one with their country.

XXIII
I have changed a good deal. I had been bitter these last days, Major Alias — these last days when the armored invasion was meeting no resistance, when our sacrificial offerings cost the Group seventeen out of twenty-three crews. It had seemed to me that we — that you in particular — were agreeing to play the part of dead men merely because the show called for dead supernumeraries. I had been bitter, Major Alias; and I had been wrong.

You in particular, but the rest of us too, had clung to the letter of a duty whose spirit had ceased to be visible for us. You had driven us intuitively not towards victory, which was impossible, but towards self-fulfillment. You knew as well as we did that the intelligence we brought back would never reach the Staff. But you were salvaging rites whose power none of us could perceive. Each time that you examined us on the lorries, the barges, the railway trains we had spotted, examined us as soberly as if our answers could possibly serve a purpose, you seemed to me revoltingly hypocritical. But you were right, Major Alias.

Until I learned what I learned over Arras, I could feel no responsibility for this stream of refugees over which once more I fly. I can be bound to no men except those to whom I give. I understand no men except those to whom I am bound. I exist only to the degree that I am nourished by the springs at my roots. I am bound to that mob on the highways, and it is bound to me. At three hundred miles an hour and an elevation of six hundred feet, now that I have come down out of the clouds, I have become one with that mob. I, flying in the descending night, am like a shepherd who in a single glance counts and collects and welds his scattered sheep into a flock again. That mob is no longer a mob, it is a people.

We dwell in the rot of defeat, yet I am filled with a solemn and abiding jubilation, as if I had just come from a sacrament. I am steeped in chaos, yet I have won a victory. Is there a single pilot of the Group who ever flew home without this feeling of victory in his breast? This very day, when Pénicot came in from a morning’s low-altitude sortie and was telling me about it, this was how he spoke:—

‘Whenever one of their ground batteries seemed to me to be aiming too well for my comfort, I would zoom down just above the ground and make straight for the battery at full speed, and the spray from my guns would blow out their ruddy fire as if it was a candle. Before they knew it, I was on their gun crew, and you would have thought I was a bursting shell. Bang! The crew would scatter and flop in every direction. I swear, I felt as if I was scattering ninepins.’ And Pénicot, victorious captain, roared with glee, as pleased with himself as Gavoille’s gunner when they flew through the vault of the enemy searchlights like a military wedding-party marching under an arch of swords.

‘Ninety-four, Captain.’

Dutertre had picked up a landmark along the Seine, and we were down now to four hundred feet. Flowing beneath me at three hundred miles an hour, the earth was drawing great rectangles of wheat and alfalfa, great triangles of forest, across my glass windscreen. Divided by the stem of the plane, the flow of the broken landscape to left and right filled me with a curious satisfaction. The Seine shone below, and when I crossed its winding course at an angle it seemed to speed past and pivot upon itself. The swirl of the river was as lovely in my sight as the curve of a sickle in a field. I felt restored to my element. I was captain of my ship. The fuel tanks were holding out. I should certainly win a drink at poker dice from Pénicot and then beat Lacordaire at chess.

It was impossible for me not to contrast in my mind the two worlds of plane and earth. I had led Dutertre and my gunner this day beyond the bourne at which reasonable men would stop. We had seen France in flames. We had seen the sun shining on the sea. We had grown old in the upper altitudes. We had bent our glance upon a distant earth as over the cases of a museum. We had played in the sunlight with the dust of enemy fighter planes. Thereafter we had dropped earthward again and flung ourselves into the holocaust. What we could offer up, we had sacrificed. And in that sacrifice we had learned even more about ourselves than we should have done after ten years in a monastery. We had come forth again after ten years in a monastery.

And in the little time we had taken to wander so far, the caravan of refugees over which we flew had perhaps advanced five hundred yards. In less time than it would take them to lift a motorcar out of a ditch and set it back on the road again, in less time than many a driver would sit drumming impatiently on the wheel as he waited for a stream of traffic to empty itself out of a crossroad, we should be safely back in our haven.

At a single bound we had leaped over the whole defeat. We were above and beyond it, pilgrims stronger than the desert through which they toil because already in their hearts they have reached the holy city that is their destination. This night now falling would park that unhappy people of refugees in its stable of misery. The flock would huddle together for comfort, but to whom, to what would it cry out? Whereas we fly towards comrades and a kind of celebration. A lamplight gleaming from the humblest hut can change the rudest winter night into Christmas Eve. We in this plane are bound for a place where there will be comrades to welcome us. We in this plane are bound for the communion of our daily bread.

Sufficient unto this day is the weariness and the bliss thereof. I shall turn over to the ground crew my ship made noble by her scars. I shall strip off my cumbrous flying clothes; and as it is now too late to win that drink from Pénicot, I shall go directly to table and dine among my comrades. We are late. Those who are late never return. Late, are they? If late, then too late. Then nothing can be done for them. The night has swung them into eternity.

Yet at the dinner hour, when the Group takes a census of its dead, one thing is done for them: they are made handsomer than was their wont. They are sketched forever in their most luminous smile. But we in this plane are surrendering that privilege. We shall surge up out of nowhere, like demons, like poachers in a wood. The major’s hand will stop with his bread half way to his mouth. He will stare at us. Perhaps he will say, ‘Oh! . . . Oh, there you are!’ The rest will say nothing. They will scarcely throw us a glance.

Men do not really grow old. Men are as pure when you come back to them as when you left them. ‘Oh, there you are, you who are of our kind!’ The words thought and not spoken, out of delicacy of feeling. We come home from our sortie ready for our silent reward. Its quality is unique, for it is the quality of love. We do not recognize it as love. Love, when ordinarily we think of it, implies a more tumultuous pathos. But this is the veritable love — a web woven of strands in which we are fulfilled.

XXIV
When I got back to my billet I found my farmer at table with his wife and niece.

‘Tell me,’ I said to him; ‘how many instruments do you think a pilot has to look after?’

‘How should I know? Not my trade,’ he answered. ‘Must be some missing, though, to my way of thinking. The ones you win a war with. Have some supper?’

I said I’d had supper at the mess, but already he wasn’t listening to me.

‘You, our niece, there. Shove along a little. Make room for the captain.’

I was made to sit down between the girl and her aunt. Here was something besides the Group that I formed part of. Through my comrades I was woven into the whole of my country. Love is a seed: it has only to sprout, and its roots spread far and wide.

Silently my farmer broke the bread and handed it round. Unruffled, austere, the cares of his day had clothed him in dignity. Perhaps for the last time at this table, he shared his bread with us as in an act of worship. I sat thinking of the wide fields out of which that substance had come. Tomorrow those fields would be invaded by the enemy. Oh, there would be no tumult of men and clashing arms! The earth is vast. My farmer would see no more of the invasion than a solitary sentinel posted against the wide sky on the edge of the fields. In appearance nothing would have changed; but a single sign is enough to tell man that everything has changed.

The wind running through the field of grain will still resemble a wind running over the sea. But the wind in the grain is a more wonderful sweep, for as it ruffles the tips of the wheat it takes a census of a patrimony. It takes stock of a future. The wind in the grain is the caress to the spouse, it is the hand of peace stroking her hair.

Tomorrow that wheat will have changed. Wheat is something more than carnal fodder. To nourish man is not the same as to fatten cattle. Bread has more than one meaning. We have learned to see in bread a means of communion between men, for men break bread together. We have learned to see in bread the symbol of the dignity of labor, for bread is earned in the sweat of the brow. We have learned to see in bread the essential vessel of compassion, for it is bread that is distributed to the miserable. There is no savor like that of bread shared between men. And I saw of a sudden that the energy contained in this spiritual food, this bread of the spirit generated by that field of wheat, was in peril. Tomorrow, perhaps, when he broke bread again and sent it round the table, my farmer would not be celebrating the same household rite. Tomorrow, perhaps, his bread would not bring the same glow into these faces round the table. For bread is like the oil of the lamp: its merit is in the light it sheds.

I looked at the beautiful niece beside me and said to myself, ‘Bread, in this child, is transmuted into languid grace. It is transmuted into modesty. It is transmuted into gentle silence. And tomorrow, perhaps, this same bread, by virtue of a single gray uniform rising on the edge of that ocean of wheat, though it nourish this same lamp, will perhaps no longer send forth this same glowing light. The power that is in this bread will have gone out of it.’

I had made war this day to preserve the glowing light in that lamp, and not to feed that body. I had made war for the particular radiation into which bread is transmuted in the homes of my countrymen. What moved me so deeply in that pensive little girl was the insubstantial vestment of the spirit. It was the mysterious totality composed by the features of her face. It was the poem on the page, more than the page itself.

The little girl felt that I was looking at her. She raised her eyes to mine. It seemed to me that she smiled at me. Her smile was hardly more than a breath over the face of the waters; but that fugitive gleam was enough. I was moved. I felt, mysteriously present, a soul that belonged in this place and no other. There was a peace here, sensing which I murmured to myself, ‘The peace of the kingdom of silence.’ That smile was the glow of the shining wheat.

The face of the niece was unruffled again, veiling its unfathomable depth. The farmer’s wife sighed, looked round at us, and spoke no word. The farmer, his mind on the day to come, sat wrapped in his earthy wisdom. Behind the silence of these three beings there was an inner abundance that was like the patrimony of a whole village asleep in the night — and like it, threatened. Strange, the intensity with which I felt myself responsible for that invisible patrimony. I went out of the house to walk alone on the highway, and I carried with me a burden that seemed to me tender and in no wise heavy, like a child asleep in my arms.

I walked slowly, not caring where I went. I had promised myself this conversation with my village; but now I found that I had nothing to say. I strolled and lingered, filled with the thought of the ties that bound me to my people. I was one with them, they were one with me. That farmer handing round the bread had made no gift to us at table: he had shared with us and exchanged with us that bread in which all of us had our part. And by that sharing the farmer had not been impoverished but enriched. He had eaten better bread, bread of the community, by that sharing.

I strolled and lingered on the highway, filled with hope among those who seemed to be hopeless; yet even in this I was not cut off from the rest. I was their part in hope. True, we were already beaten. True, all was in suspense. True, all was threatened. Yet despite this, I could not but feel in myself the serenity of victory. Contradiction in terms? I don’t give a fig for terms. I was like Pénicot, Hochedé, Alias, Gavoille. Like them, I had no language by which to justify my feeling of victory. But like them I was filled with the sense of my responsibility. And what man can feel himself at one and the same time responsible and hopeless?

Defeat. . . . Victory. . . . Terms I do not know what to make of. One victory exalts, another corrupts. One defeat kills, another brings life. Tell me what seed is lodged in your victory or your defeat, and I will tell you its future. Life is not definable by situations but by mutations. There is but one victory that I know is sure, and that is the victory that is lodged in the energy of the seed. Sow the seed in the wide black earth and already the seed is victorious, though time must contribute to the triumph of the wheat.

This morning France was a shattered army and a chaotic population. But if in a chaotic population there is a single consciousness animated by a sense of responsibility, the chaos vanishes. A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. I shall not fret about the loam if somewhere in it a seed lies buried. The seed will drain the loam, and the wheat will blaze.

He who accedes to contemplation transmutes himself into seed. He who makes a discovery pulls me by the sleeve to draw my attention to it. He who invents preaches his invention. How a Hochedé will express himself or act, I do not know, nor does it matter. He will surely spread his tranquil faith. What I do see more clearly now is the prime agent of victory. He who bears in his heart a cathedral to be built is already victorious. He who seeks to become sexton of a finished cathedral is already defeated. Victory is the fruit of love. Only love can say what face shall emerge from the clay. Only love can guide man towards that face. Intelligence is valid only as it serves love.

Concerning the part played by intelligence, we were long in error. We neglected the substance of man. Ww believed that the virtuosity of base natures could aid in the triumph of noble causes, that shrewd selfishness could exalt spirits to sacrifice, that withered hearts could by a wind of phrases found brotherhood or love. We neglected Being.


From the armored divisions that defeated us I learned a lesson which is to be read in their manual of tactics: ‘An armored division should move against the enemy like water. It should bear lightly against the enemy’s wall of defense and advance only at the point where it meets with no resistance.’ Men fill small space in the earth’s immensity. A continuous wall of men in France would have required a hundred million soldiers. There were always gaps between the units, and through those gaps the tanks made their way. The seed haunted by the sun never fails to find its way between the stones in the ground. And the pure logician, if no sun draws him forth, remains entangled in his logic. What direction should the armored column take to invest the rear of the enemy? I do not know. What should the armored column be for this purpose? It should be weight of sea pressing against dike.

What ought we do? This. That. The contrary of this or that. There is no determinism that governs the future. What ought we be? That is the essential question, the question that concerns spirit and not intelligence. For spirit impregnates intelligence with the creation that is to come forth. And later, intelligence is brought to bed of creation. How should man go about building the first ship ever known ? Very complicated, this. The ship will be born of a thousand errors and fumblings. But what should man be to build that first ship? Here I seize the problem of creation at the root. Merchant. Soldier. In love with the prospect of faraway lands. For then of necessity designers and builders will be born of that love. They will drain the energy of workmen and one day launch a ship. What should we do to annihilate a forest? The question is not easy. What be? Obviously, a forest fire.

Tomorrow we of France will enter info the night of defeat. May my country still exist when day dawns again. What ought we do to save my country? I do not know. Contradictory things. Our spiritual heritage must be preserved, else our people will be deprived of their genius. Our people must be preserved, else our heritage will become lost. For want of a way to reconcile heritage and people in their formulæ, logicians will be tempted to sacrifice either the body or the soul. But I want nothing to do with logicians. I want my country to exist both in the flesh and in the spirit when day dawns. Therefore I must bear with all the weight of my love in that direction. There is no passage the sea cannot clear for itself if it bear with all its weight.

We are warmed by the awareness of the ties that bind us to our people — wherefore we feel ourselves already victorious. We know that we are one with the rest. But that the rest may know it, we must learn to express it. That is a matter of consciousness and language. A matter also of avoiding the verbal traps of superficial logic and polemical wrangling in which substance is destroyed. Above all, we must not reject any part of that to which we belong.

And therefore I, leaning back against a wall in the silence of the village night, home from my flight to Arras, enlightened, as it seemed to me, by my flight to Arras, imposed upon myself these rules that I shall never betray.

Since I am one with the people of France, I shall never reject my people, whatever they may do. I shall never preach against them in the hearing of others. Whenever it is possible to take their defense, I shall defend them. If they cover me with shame, I shall lock up that shame in my heart and be silent. Whatever at such a time I shall think of them, I shall never bear witness against them. Does a husband go from house to house crying out to his neighbors that his wife is a strumpet? Is it thus that he can preserve his honor? No, for his wife is one with his home. No, for he cannot establish his dignity against her. Let him go home to her, and there unburden himself of his anger.

Thus, I shall not divorce myself from a defeat which surely will often humiliate me. I am part of France, and France is part of me. France brought forth men called Pascal, Renoir, Pasteur, Guillaumet, Hochedé. She brought forth also men who were inept, were politicasters, were cheats. But it would be too easy for a man to declare himself part of the first France and not of the other.

Defeat divides men. Defeat unbinds that which was bound. In this unbinding there is danger of death. I shall not contribute to these divisions between Frenchmen by casting the responsibility for the disaster upon those of my people who think differently from me. Where there is no judge, nothing is to be gained by hurling accusations. All Frenchmen were defeated together. I was defeated. Hochedé was defeated. Hochedé does not blame others for the defeat. Hochedé says to himself, ‘I, Hochedé, who am one with France, was weak. France that is one with me, Hochedé, was weak. I was weak in her, and she in me.’ Hochedé knows perfectly that once he begins distinguishing between his people and himself, he glorifies only himself. And from that moment there ceases to exist a Hochedé who is part of a home, a family, a Group, a nation: there remains a Hochedé who is part of a desert.

If I take upon myself a share in my family’s humiliation I shall be able to influence my family. It is part of me, as I am of it. But if I reject its humiliation, my family must collapse; and I shall wander alone, filled with vainglory, but a shell as empty as a corpse.

I reject non-being. My purpose is to be. And if I am to be, I must begin by assuming responsibility. Only a few hours ago I was blind. I was bitter. But now I am able to judge more clearly. Just as I refuse to complain of other Frenchmen, since now I feel myself one with France, so I am no longer able to conceive that France has the right to complain of the rest of the world. Each is responsible for all. France was responsible for all the world. Had France been France, she might have stood to the world as the common ideal round which the world would have rallied. She might have served as the keystone in the world’s arch. Had France possessed the flavor of France, the radiation of France, the whole world would have been magnetized into a resistance of which the spearhead would have been France. I reject henceforth my reproaches against the world. Assuming that at a given moment the world lacked a soul, France owed it to herself to serve as the world’s soul.

The spiritual communion of men the world over did not operate in our favor. But had we stood for that communion of men, we should have saved the world and ourselves. In that task we failed. Each is responsible for all. Each is by himself responsible. Each by himself is responsible for all. I understand now for the first time the mystery of the religion whence was born the civilization I claim as my own: ‘To bear the sins of man.’ Each man bears the sins of all men.

This being so, I shall carry out to the end the obligations laid upon me by my civilization. I shall consider that I am responsible not only for my own weakness but for the fanaticism of my enemy. To confess this guilt is to be neither soft nor tame-spirited. It is to abide by a principle of action. Had we considered ourselves responsible for the freezing up of our aerial cannon, our aerial cannon would not have frozen up. But when we proclaimed ourselves innocent of the faults of others, we lost the power to influence those others and to persuade them to produce flawless cannon. If I excuse myself on pretext of fatality, I subject myself to fatality. For my part, I refuse this subjection. Fatality does not exist. I am endowed with the power to influence that whole of which I form part. I am a constituent part of the community of mankind.

XXV
A religion that complained of the existence of infidels would seem to us preposterous. Where are religions recruited except among the heathen? A civilization is like a religion: it is a seed, and its function is to drain and convert. My civilization and the Christian values out of which it was born were placed in jeopardy by my failure. There was a time when those values radiated energy. Why is it that they are unable to make their way in my enemy?

It is distasteful to me to cast all the blame for this upon my enemy. It is distasteful to me to play the part of the lamb in order to denounce the wolf. The wolf is action. The lamb is inertia. To play the lamb may soothe my conscience, but it makes me out a victim. The rôle of victim is distasteful to me.

There was a time when my civilization was action. It transformed mankind, freed slaves, cast down the cruel, reigned over empires. And am I to snivel and whine, call myself a poor bullied lamb? I do not feel that I was born to play this miserable part. If I am feeble, the reason is that somewhere I was false to the rules that once made me strong. I know what happened. I waited until I was in jeopardy before taking thought of my civilization. As soon as danger threatened, I took shelter behind my civilization. ‘What!’ I cried. ‘Are you not ashamed to attack such a beautiful cathedral?’ But I had long ceased to be the builder of that cathedral. I had been living in it as sexton, as beadle. Which is to say, as a man defeated. I had been taking advantage of its tranquillity, its tolerance, its warmth. I had been a parasite. It had meant to me no more than a place where I was snug and secure.

My civilization had given me the right to believe in the community of men. Trapped, I had cried out to that community for help. My enemies, I cried, are betraying our community. But my friends pleaded other business. Thus they too betrayed it. And I had been filled with indignation over their treason. But was I myself not guilty of treason?

When I cried out, I no longer knew what I was crying out about. My civilization had been founded upon the respect for something present in every individual which it called Man. But I had let the notion of Man rot. I myself had confused Man with the individual. When I spoke of the community of men, I no longer knew what I was talking about. It might have been a slave market I was talking about — for I saw my community as a mere numerical sum and not as a Being. I looked upon it as a mere phenomenon of nature. Stones in the rock pile are meaningless; they are endowed with meaning by the cathedral they constitute. Men in the mass are meaningless; they are endowed with dignity by the existence of Man. It was because of this that my civilization had ever and always striven to reveal Man to men, to define that universal being, Man. And Man, exalted as the object to be revered by the individual, in turn exalted the individual. It was Man as a quality inherent in each individual that my civilization taught me to respect.

How were my enemies to understand this when I myself no longer understood it? When I myself had ceased to speak of the rights of Man and was mouthing phrases about the rights of the collectivity, of the mass? Here and there I and my kind had still retained a vague notion of the truth. We still agreed, for example, that a hundred men ought to risk their lives to save the life of a single miner entombed; and that if ten of those men died, their death was nevertheless profitable, since they died paying homage to Man. And we recognized that the miner rescued could be called upon to help rescue another miner entombed — since it was not he, the individual, who had been saved, but Man in his person.

Yet little by little I had forgotten Man.

My civilization had declared that all men were equal. But when I forgot Man I ceased to know the meaning of my words. Men are equal in something. Stones are equal in the cathedral. The soldier and the captain are equal in the nation. Men are equal in Man. It is this specific equality that demands of the physician, however distinguished he may be, that he risk his life in the treatment of a plague-infested nobody. That nobody is not an individual, he is a representative of Man. It is not as a political individual, or an economic individual, but strictly as a human being that he is the object of the physician’s care, and the equal of the physician. My civilization forbade me to enslave men, which is to say, enslave Man. It forbade me to put any obstacle in the way of the upward striving of the individual, which is to say, prevent Man, present in the individual, from ennobling the human race and enriching the human community by his creation. Man makes a choice of this or that individual as the vessel of Man’s expression, and I have no right to bar the passage of that vessel. True equality is equality in respect of the rights possessed by Man present in every individual.

My civilization implied the liberty of Man. Every individual is free in it to enunciate the new verity that has taken shape in his consciousness, to bring forth the new poem, the new theory, the new song born in him. No tyrant may constrain him to silence. For through him it is Man that creates. But my civilization also guaranteed the individual against the tyranny that might be exercised by the sum of other individuals. It is intolerable that a single individual should oppress the mass. But it is also intolerable that the mass crush out the creative impulse of Man at work in a single individual.

But I, forgetting Man, defined my liberty by asserting that it must stop at the point where it does injury to the liberty of my neighbor. This seeming ideal is void of meaning, for in fact no man can act without involving other men. If I, being a soldier, mutilate myself, I am shot. An isolated individual does not exist. He who is sad saddens others.

But above all, forgetting Man I forgot the true significance of sacrifice. If we are to draw our substance from a whole greater than ourselves, receive our significance from it, we must first see that it exists. Man must give before he can receive, and build before he can inhabit. The gift to something greater than oneself is what my civilization called sacrifice. If I insist upon giving only to myself, I shall receive nothing. I shall be building nothing of which I am to form part, and therefore I shall be nothing. And when, afterwards, you come to me and ask me to die for a cause, I shall refuse to die. My own cause commands me to live. Where is that rush of love that will compensate my death? Man dies for a home, not for walls and tables. Man dies for a cathedral, not for stones. Man dies for a people, not for a mob. Man dies for love of Man, if Man is the keystone in the arch of a community. Man dies for that by which alone he cared to live.

There is a mystery here that is like the mystery of the infant’s milk. The mother gives to the child. By her giving, she creates her love. To create love, we must begin by sacrifice. Afterwards, it is love that makes the sacrifices. But it is we who must take the first step.

When I took off for Arras I asked to receive before giving. My demand was in vain. We must give before we can receive, build before we can inhabit. By my gift over Arras I created the love that I feel for my kind as the mother creates the breast by the gift of her milk. At first the heart is a desert. The child smiles, and the heart is filled.

I came back from Arras, having woven my ties with my farmer’s family. By the smile of his niece I saw the wheat of my village. By the aid of my village I saw my country. By the aid of my country, all other countries. I came back to take my place in a civilization which has chosen Man as the keystone in its arch. I came back to take my place in Group 2-33, the Group that had volunteered to fight for Norway. I came back to be one of those who are made richer — not poorer — by the wealth of other countries. The web that is strong has no fear of diversity; it delights in the variety of the strands that compose it. In the ages of faith the cathedrals were able to absorb gargoyles as easily as saints into their canticle. Tulips are grown in Holland, flamencos are sung in Spain, Christmas is snowy in Norway — and by all these I am enriched, for I partake of Man.

I dressed this day for the service of a god to whose being I was blind. Arras unsealed my eyes. Like the others of the Group, I am no longer blind. It may be that tomorrow Alias will order me to fly still another sortie. If, at dawn tomorrow, I fight again, I shall know finally why I fight. Not for victory, since the war is already lost, but for selffulfillment.

My eyes have been unsealed, and I want now to remember what it is that they have seen. I feel the need of a simple Credo so that I may remember.

I believe in the submission of the individual to Man and of the particular to the universal.

I believe that the cult of the universal exalts and heightens our particular riches, and founds the sole veritable order which is the order of life. A tree is a unit despite the diversity of its roots and branches; it is an object of order.

I believe that the cult of the particular is the cult of death, for it founds its order upon likeness. It mistakes identity of parts for unity of Being. This is why every foreign way of life, every foreign people, every foreign thought is to it an affront. Its order comes merely to this, that it destroys the cathedral solely to line up the stones in orderly rows. Therefore I shall fight against all those who strive to impose a particular way of life upon other ways of life, a particular people upon other peoples, a particular race upon other races, a particular system of thought upon other systems of thought.

I believe that the primacy of Man founds the only equality and the only liberty that possess significance. I believe in the equality of the rights of Man inherent in every man. I believe that only liberty makes possible the creations of Man through the instrument of the individual. Equality is not identity. Liberty is not the exaltation of the individual against Man. I shall fight against all those who seek to subject the liberty of Man either to an individual or to the mass of individuals.

I believe that what my civilization calls Charity is the sacrifice granted Man for the purpose of his own fulfillment. Charity is the gift made to Man present in the mediocrity of the individual. It fulfills man. Symbolically, on Maundy Thursday the bishop washes the feet of the poor. There is no worship of the individual in this gesture. The charity and the piety that flow from it speak to us neither of inferiority nor of demagogy. They exalt the individual solely in the fact of recognizing Man present in his person. I shall fight against all those who, maintaining that my charity pays homage to mediocrity, would destroy Man and thus imprison the individual in an irredeemable mediocrity.

I shall fight for Man. Against Man’s enemies — but against myself as well.

XXVI
We collected again at midnight to receive orders. Group 2-33 was sleepy. The flame in the fireplace had turned to embers. The Group seemed to be holding up still, but this was an illusion. Hochedé was staring glumly at his precious watch. Pénicot stood against a wall in a corner, his eyes shut. Gavoille, sitting on a table, his glance vacant and legs hanging, was pouting like a child about to cry. The doctor was nodding over a book. Alias alone was still alert, but frighteningly pale, papers before him under the lamplight, discussing something in a low voice with Geley. Discussion, indeed, gives you a false picture. The major was talking. Geley was nodding his head and saying, ‘Yes, of course.’ Geley was hanging on to that ‘Yes, of course’ by main strength. He was clinging more and more eagerly to the major’s discourse, like a half-drowned man to the neck of a swimmer. Had I been Alias I should have said without a change of voice, ‘Captain Geley, you are to be shot at dawn,’and waited for the answer.

The Group had not slept for three nights. It stood like a house of cards.

The major got up, went across to Lacordaire, and pulled him out of a dream in which perhaps he was beating me at chess.

‘Lacordaire! You take off at dawn. Ground-scraper sortie.'

‘Very good, Major.'

‘Better get some sleep.'

‘Yes, Major.'

Lacordaire sat down again. The major went out, drawing Geley in his wake as if he were a dead fish on the end of a line. It was nearer a week than three days since Geley had been to bed. Like Alias, not only did he fly his sorties, but he carried part of the burden of responsibility for the Group. Human resistance has its limits: Geley seemed to have crossed his. Yet there they were, the swimmer and his burden, going off to the Staff for phantom orders.

Vesain, the skeptical Vesain, asleep on his feet, came teetering over to me like a somnambulist: —

‘You asleep?'

‘I . . .'

I had been lying back in an armchair (for I had found an armchair) and was indeed dropping off. But Vesain’s voice bothered me. What was it he had said? ‘Looks bad, old boy. . . . Categorically blocked. . . . Looks bad. . .'

‘You sleep?5

‘I. . . . No. . . . What did you say looks bad?'

‘The war,’he said.

That was news, now! I started to drop off again and murmured vaguely, ‘What war?'

‘What do you mean, “What war"!'

The major flung open the door and called out, ‘All set! We move out tonight!'

Behind him stood Geley, wide awake, He would put off his ‘Yes, of course’ until tomorrow night. Once again he would somehow find a reserve of strength in himself to help him with the wearying chores of our removal.

The Group got to its feet. The Group said, ‘Move again? Very good, sir.’ What else was there to say.

There was nothing to say. We should see to the removal. Lacordaire would stay behind and take off at dawn. If he got back he would meet us at our new base.

There would be nothing to say tomorrow, either. Tomorrow, in the eyes of the bystanders, we would be the defeated. The defeated have no right to speak. No more right to speak than has the seed.



飞往阿拉斯。三
作者：安托万-德-圣埃克苏佩里
1942年3月号
赏析
(译者：刘易斯-加兰蒂尔）

[在这个关于1940年5月法国空军的真实故事中，圣埃克苏佩里上尉描述了他自己的护卫队被击溃的经历（23架飞机中有6架幸存），特别是他的飞机、他的观察员杜特雷、他的炮手和他自己在阿拉斯上空的危险飞行中发生了什么。这里用史诗般的散文讲述了人类面对失败时的勇气。描述起飞和法国防线内的混乱的章节出现在1月和2月的《大西洋》杂志上。- 编辑]
第十九章
'172°'


'对! 172°.'

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称其为一七二。墓志铭。准确地保持在172°的航线上'。这个疯狂的挑战还要持续多久？我现在在两千三百英尺的高空飞行，在厚重的云层下。如果我再上升一百英尺，Dutertre就会失明。因此，我们不得不保持对防空炮台的可见度，扮演德国人的弓箭手的目标。两千英尺是一个被禁止的高度。你的机器是整个平原的标志。你耗尽了整个军队的炮火。你在各种口径的射程之内。你在每一种连续的武器的火力范围内停留了很长时间。你不是被大炮打中，而是被棍子打中。就像用一千根棍子打倒一个核桃一样。

我曾对这个问题进行了一番思考。不存在降落伞的问题。当遇难飞机俯冲到地面时，打开逃生舱门所需的时间比飞机俯冲的时间还要长。打开舱门需要转动七圈的曲柄，而曲柄会被粘住。此外，在全速状态下，舱门会翘起并拒绝滑动。

就是这样。这药总有一天要被吞下去的。我一直知道这一点。同时，公式并不复杂：坚持到172°。


'一七四'。

'对! '一七四。

叫它一七四。必须改变这个墓志铭。

'船长，他们开始开火了。

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我瞥了一眼高度计：两千一百五十英尺。云层在两千三百英尺。好吧。没什么可做的。让我吃惊的是，在我的云层下面，世界并不是像我想象的那样是黑色的。它是蓝色的。令人惊叹的蓝色。暮色已经降临，所有的平原都是蓝色的。

'一六八'。

'没错！一六八。

叫它一六八。有趣的是，通往永恒的道路应该是之字形的。而且是如此的平静! 这里的土地看起来像一个果园。刚才在我看来，它似乎是骷髅的，非人类的枯萎。但我正在低空飞行，与它有一种亲密的关系。这里有一些树，有些是孤立的，有些是成群的。你会见到它们。还有绿色的田野。还有红瓦屋顶的房子。

一七五"。

我的墓志铭已经失去了很多简洁的尊严："在172°、174°、168°、175°上保持航线。.' 我将看起来是一个非常多才多艺的家伙。那是什么？发动机在咳嗽？越来越冷了。我关闭了引擎盖的通风装置。很好。是时候换上备用油箱了。我拉动杠杆。我是不是忘了什么？我看了一眼油表。一切都很正常。

'开始变得有点讨厌了，船长。

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开始变得下流了。然而，我不禁为这个夜晚的蓝色感到惊奇。它是如此非凡。颜色是如此之深。还有那些果树，也许是李子树，流淌着。我现在是乡村的一部分。我是一个跳过墙的掠夺者。我在湿润的紫花苜蓿中奔跑，偷窃李子。这是一场奇怪的战争。一场令人怀念的、美丽的蓝色战争。我不知何故迷了路，在年老时误入这个陌生的国度。. .

'Zigzag，队长！'

这里有一个新的游戏。你用右脚踢舵杆，然后用左脚，防空炮台就碰不到你了。当我还是个孩子的时候，我摔倒了，我经常把自己摔得鼻青脸肿。我相信我的护士曾经用山金车敷过我。我想，我将非常需要山金车。

在我的飞机前方，我突然看到有三支长枪瞄准了我的机器。三条长长的明亮的垂直树枝。这是从小口径枪里射出的曳光弹的轨迹。它们是金色的。突然间，在傍晚的蓝色中，我看到了一个三棱形烛台的喷出的光亮。

'船长! 向左舷快速开火。猛烈的下降！'

我踢了踢我的方向舵。

'越来越糟！'

更糟？

是的，是越来越糟；但我没有感觉到那些我认为在面对这些流星的爪子时应该感觉到的东西。

我身处一个令我心动的国家。白昼正在消逝。在左边，我看到阵雨中巨大的光板。它们就像大教堂窗户上的玻璃。几乎触手可及的地方，我都可以处理地球上的美好事物。有那些李子树和它们的李子。还有那散发着泥土气息的大地。踩在潮湿的土地上，一定很美妙。

'阿拉斯！'

是的。前面很远。但阿拉斯并不是一个城镇。到目前为止，阿拉斯不过是蓝色夜幕背景下的一根红色羽毛。在风暴的背景下。因为明确无误的是，在左前方，一场可怕的暴风雨正在聚集。仅仅是黄昏是无法解释这种半光的。它需要云块来过滤如此阴沉的光亮。阿拉斯的火焰现在更大了。你不会说这是一场大火的火焰。战火的蔓延就像一个被活生生的肉体所包围的软骨瘤。那根永久点燃的红色羽毛是一盏可能有点冒烟的灯的光辉。它是一种没有闪烁的火焰，肯定会持续下去，有充足的油。我可以感觉到它被塑造成一种紧凑的物质，一种几乎是固体的东西，风不时地搅动它，像弯曲一棵树一样弯曲。就是这样：一棵树。阿拉斯被卷入了这棵树的根系网中。而阿拉斯所有的髓，阿拉斯所有的物质，阿拉斯所有的宝藏，现在都变成了汁液，来滋养这棵树。

我可以看到，头重脚轻的火焰偶尔会失去左右平衡，喷出更黑的烟云，然后又收敛起来。但我仍然无法看清城镇的情况。

整个战争就在那片光芒中得到了总结。Dutertre说，情况越来越糟。他站在前面，比我看得更清楚。然而，我对我们的宽容感到惊讶：这个有毒的平原几乎没有星星。

'船长！船长！舰长！舰长！"。我从来没有见过这样的东西！

我也没有。

我的弱点现在在哪里？我自己都不知道，我一直希望。. . .

二十
尽管我的海拔不高，但我一直在希望。尽管有坦克公园，尽管阿拉斯上空有火焰。我拼命地希望。

我一直在使用我包里的每一个技巧。当杜特尔特对我说："情况越来越糟了 "时，我甚至把这种威胁作为希望的来源。我们在打仗：那么，必然要有战争的证据。证据不过是几道光而已。'这就是你在阿拉斯上空的可怕死亡危险吗？别逗我笑了！'

我自己也不能不受骗--因为这整个世界都是舒适而青翠的，因为湿漉漉的石板和瓦片如此亲切地照耀着，因为从一分钟到另一分钟没有任何变化或承诺会有变化。既然我们三个，杜特尔特，炮手和我，都是走过田野的人，闲庭信步地回家，甚至不需要提高我们的衣领，所以雨下得很小。既然在德军的中心地带，没有什么是真正值得一提的；由此可见，在更远的地方，战争不一定会与此不同。因为敌人似乎已经分散开来，融化在宽阔的农村平原上，也许是以一兵一户、一兵一树的速度站立着，其中一个人时不时地想起战争，就会开枪。这个命令已经被灌输到这个家伙的耳朵里："向所有的敌机开火"。但他一直在做白日梦，而这个命令也被梦境冲淡了。他没有对结果抱有太大的期望，就打了三发子弹。因此，在黄昏时分，我经常射杀一些对我来说意义不大的鸭子，如果这个夜晚邀请我的灵魂。我一边射击，一边谈论别的事情。这几乎没有惊扰到鸭子们。

我是多么脆弱啊! 然而在我看来，我的脆弱本身就是一个

陷阱，是哄骗敌人的手段："为什么要开枪？你的朋友肯定会在更远的地方把我打下来。'而他们会耸耸肩：'去别的地方扭断你的脖子吧。他们把这个苦差事留给了下一个炮兵连--因为他们急于不想错过喝汤的机会，正在完成他们的有趣故事，或者只是在享受晚间的微风。我正在利用他们的疏忽，而我被一个看似巧合的情况所拯救，那就是所有的人似乎都对战争感到厌倦了。为什么不呢？我已经隐约想到，从一个士兵到另一个士兵，一个班到另一个班，一个村到另一个村。

我应该通过这次出击。毕竟，我们只是傍晚天空中的一架过路飞机，算得了什么？不足以让一个人抬起眼睛。

我当然希望能回来。但我同时也能感觉到，空气中弥漫着某种东西。你被判刑了；刑罚笼罩着你；但关着你的监狱仍然是一片寂静。你紧紧抓住这种沉默。每一秒钟都像之前的那一秒钟。没有理由让即将下降的一秒改变世界。这样的任务对一秒钟来说太沉重了。接下来的每一秒钟都在保护你的沉默。这种沉默似乎已经是永久的了。

但是，走廊里响起了必须来的人的脚步声。

这个乡下的东西突然爆炸了。因此，一根似乎被烧毁的木头突然噼啪作响，并喷出了火花。怎么会在同一时刻，整个平原都启动了呢？当春天来临时，所有的树木都会一下子落下它们的种子。为什么会有这种突然的春意盎然的武器？为什么这股发光的洪流向我们涌来，而且突然间就普及了？

我的第一感觉是，我太粗心了。我破坏了一切。一个眨眼，一个手势就足以让你从钢丝上摔下来。一个登山者咳嗽一下，他就会释放出雪崩。一旦他释放了雪崩，一切都结束了。

我们一直在这个已经被夜色淹没的蓝色沼泽中重重地摇摆。我们激起了这股无声的粘液；现在，成千上万的粘液正向我们涌来它的金色气泡。一个由杂耍者组成的国家已经开始跳舞了。一个杂耍者的国家正在向我们的方向抛出数以万计的弹丸。因为它们是直奔我们而来，所以起初看起来是一动不动的。就像杂耍者似乎不是把彩球抛向空中而是向上释放一样，它们在徘徊中上升。我可以看到那些光的眼泪通过像油一样的寂静流向我。那是杂耍者表演时的沉默。

一挺机枪或一门速射炮的每一次爆发都会射出成百上千的磷光子弹，它们像念珠的珠子一样彼此相随。一千颗有弹性的念珠向飞机方向串起，把自己拉到断裂点，在我们的高度爆裂。当错过我们的时候，这串念珠以切线的方式飞走了，其速度令人目眩。子弹被转化成了闪电。我被淹没在一茬茬像麦秆一样金黄的弹道中飞翔。我飞在一丛长枪短炮的中心。我在巨大的、令人头晕目眩的织带针的威胁下飞翔。所有的平原现在都被我束缚住了，在我周围编织和缠绕着，这是一张令人目眩的金线网。

我靠向大地，看到那些传说中的发光气泡随着雾幔的迟缓移动而上升。我凝视着种子的缓慢漩涡，像脱粒后的谷壳一样旋转着。当我抬起头时，我看到了地平线上那些成堆的长矛。枪声响起？根本不可能！我是被冰冷的钢铁攻击的。我是被冰冷的钢铁攻击的。这些是光的剑。

我觉得......当然不会有危险！我觉得我是在做梦。我被笼罩着的奢华所迷惑。

那是什么！？

我被震得离开座位近一尺。我想，这架飞机被狠狠地撞了一下。它已经爆裂，被磨成了碎片。. . . 但它没有；它没有。. . 我仍然能感觉到它对控制的反应。这不过是大量打击中的第一击。然而，下面并没有爆炸的迹象。重炮的烟雾可能已经融入了黑暗的地面。

我抬起头，凝视着。我看到的是没有吸引力的东西。

二十一
我一直在看一场光的狂欢。天花板一点一点地升起，我没有意识到在云层和我之间有一个间隔空间。我沿着一条由地面炮台点缀的飞行线曲折前进。他们的曳光弹在空中喷射出小麦色的光柱。我忘了，在他们飞行的顶端，这些炮台的炮弹一定会爆裂。现在，我抬起头来，看到我周围和面前的那些由烟雾和钢铁组成的铆钉以高耸的金字塔的形式冲向天空。

我很清楚，这些铆钉刚被驱动，所有的危险就已经消失了，这些烟尘中的每一个都拥有生与死的力量，只有几分之一秒的时间。但是，它们的出现是如此的突然和同时，以至于我的脑海中闪现出阴谋家有意要杀死我的形象。他们的目的突然暴露在我面前，我感到我的脖子上有一种无法逃避的责备的重量。

当那些爆炸声传到我耳中时，它们的声音被我引擎的轰鸣声所掩盖，我产生了一种异常安静的错觉。那些巨大的烟尘和钢铁包，无声无息地向上移动，在我身后像冰山一样萦绕，让我相信，从它们的角度看，我一定是一动不动。我一动不动地躺在巨大的审判庭前的被告席上。法官们正在审议我的命运，而我没有什么可以申辩的。悬念的永恒性再一次抓住了我。我想，--我还能想，--'他们的目标太高了，'我及时抬起头来，看到头顶上有一群黑色的薄片，像老鹰一样滑翔着，不情愿地从我身边荡开了。那些鹰已经放弃了我。我不会成为它们的猎物。但即便如此，我还有什么希望呢？

那些继续错过我的炮台也继续重新调整它们的目标。在我飞行的过程中，新的硝烟和钢铁之墙继续在我周围筑起。地面上的炮火不是在寻找我，而是在向我逼近。

Dutertre! 还有多少这种情况？

'坚持三分钟，上尉。不过，看起来很糟糕。

'你认为我们能通过吗？

'别想了！'

从来没有像这股浑浊的烟雾一样的淤泥，这混乱的局面像一堆肮脏的破布一样肮脏。这片平原是蓝色的。非常的蓝。深海之蓝。

在这蓝色的平原和这肮脏的天空之间，一个人的生命值多少呢？十秒钟，也许；或者二十秒。炮弹爆炸的冲击使整个天空都在颤抖。当一发炮弹在很近的地方爆炸时，爆炸声沿着飞机隆隆作响，就像岩石从降落伞上掉下来一样。而当轰鸣声停止的那一刻，飞机上响起了一种几乎是音乐般的声音。就像一声叹息，几乎是；而这声叹息告诉我们，飞机已经被打偏了。这些爆裂声就像雷声一样：它们越接近，就越简单。轰隆一声意味着距离，一声清脆的巨响！意味着我们被炮弹碎片正中。老虎不会对它打倒的牛做乱七八糟的工作。老虎把它的爪子伸进牛的身体里，没有打滑。它占有了这头牛。每一个被炮弹碎片击中的方块都像爪子插入活肉一样沉入机体。

'有人受伤吗？

'不是我！'

'炮手！你没事吧？

''好的，长官！'

不知何故，那些爆炸，尽管我发现我必须提到它们，但并不真正算数。它们像敲鼓一样敲打着飞机的机身。它们刺穿了我的燃料箱。它们可能很容易地敲击我们的腹部，反而刺穿了它们。肚子是什么，只是一种鼓？但谁会关心他的身体会发生什么？不寻常的是，身体是多么的不重要。

我曾经在为出征穿衣服时想，一个人的最后时刻是什么样的。而每一次，生活都会让我唤起的鬼魂成为谎言。现在，我就在这里，赤身裸体，在战场上奔跑，甚至无法用手臂或肩膀来保护我的头，以抵御向我倾泻的疯狂打击。我一直以为，当考验来临的时候，将是一场关乎我的肉体的考验。我想，只有我的肉体才会受到折磨。在考虑这些事情时，我不可避免地要采用我的身体的观点。像所有的人一样，我已经给了它很多的时间。我给它穿衣服，给它洗澡，给它吃饭，给它解渴。我把自己和这只被驯化的动物放在一起。我曾带它去看裁缝、外科医生和理发师。我曾和它一起不开心，和它一起痛苦地哭，和它一起爱。我曾对它说："这就是我。而现在，我的幻想突然消失了。我的身体对我来说是什么？是为我服务的一种奴仆。让我的怒火燃烧起来，让我的爱变得高高在上，让我的恨意在我身上聚集起来，我和我的身体之间那种自夸的团结就消失了。

你的儿子在一个燃烧的房子里。没有人能够阻止你。你可能会被烧死；但你想到了吗？你准备把你身体的破烂遗赠给任何愿意接受它们的人。你发现你所珍视的东西是垃圾。如果有必要，你愿意卖掉自己的手，给朋友一只手。你存在于你的行为中，而不是你的身体中。你的行为就是你自己，没有别的你。你的身体属于你：它不是你。你要打击一个敌人吗？任何身体伤害的威胁都不能阻止你。你呢？敌人的死亡才是你。你呢？拯救你的孩子才是你。在那一刻，你用自己与其他东西交换；而你没有感觉到你因交换而失去了什么。你的成员？工具。一个工具在你手中折断：这个工具有多重要？你用自己与敌人的死亡、孩子的获救、病人的康复、定理的完善进行交换。这里有一个我的集团的飞行员受伤和死亡。在一般的命令中，真正的引证应该是：'向他的观察员喊道："他们抓住我了！"。打败它！"。看在上帝的份上，不要丢掉那些笔记！" '重要的是那些笔记、孩子、病人、定理。你的真正意义变得令人眼花缭乱地明显。你的真名是责任、憎恨、爱、孩子、定理。除了这个，没有别的你。

房子的火焰，潜水平面的火焰，剥去了肉体；但它们也剥去了对肉体的膜拜。人不再关心自己：他突然认识到自己是什么的一部分。如果他死了，他不会把自己与他的同类切断，而是使自己与他们成为一体。他不是在失去自己，而是在寻找自己。我所肯定的这一点并不是一个道德家的一厢情愿。它是一个日常的事实。它是一个普通的事实。但这一事实和真相隐藏在我们日常幻觉的外衣下。穿着衣服，为我的身体可能遭遇的命运而烦恼，我不可能看到我在为一些荒谬的事情烦恼。但在你放弃身体的那一瞬间，你会惊讶地发现--所有的人都会惊讶地发现--你对自己的身体是多么的不珍惜。如果否认在我生命中的所有那些年里，当没有任何坚持不懈的东西促使我，当我存在的意义没有受到威胁时，我不可能想象到任何东西可能有我身体的一半那么重要，那将是愚蠢的。但在这个平面上，我对我的身体说（实际上）：'以这种或那种方式，我已经把你的生命拖到了这一步；在这里，我发现你并不重要。

人并没有死。人想象他害怕的是死亡；但他害怕的是不可预见的，是爆炸。人所害怕的是他自己，而不是死亡。当你遇到死亡时，就没有死亡。当身体沉入死亡时，人的本质就显现出来。人是一个结，一张网，一张网，各种关系被捆绑在其中。只有这些关系是重要的。身体是一个古老的陶罐，没有人会怀念它。我从来不知道一个人在死亡时还会想到自己。从来没有。

'船长！'

'怎么了？

'越来越热了！'

'炮手！'

'呃. . . 是的，长官。

'什么--'

我的问题在另一次爆炸的冲击下消失了。

'Dutertre！'

'船长？

'受伤了吗？

'没有'。

'你，炮手！'

'是的，长官。

'我哇--'

我似乎要把飞机撞上一堵铜墙铁壁。一个声音在我耳边说：'孩子！哦，孩子！'。'当我抬头测量与悬挂的云层的距离时。我盯着的角度越尖锐，阴暗的云层似乎堆积得越密集。在头顶上直视，天空在它们之间清晰可见，它们弯弯曲曲地散落着，在空中形成一个巨大的冠冕。

一个人的大腿肌肉的力量是惊人的。我用尽全身力气压住舵杆，让飞机颤抖着滑行，与我们的飞行线成直角。冕下从头顶上掠过，在我右边滑下。我已经离开了其中一个炮台，让它发射浪费的炮弹包。但是，在我的另一条大腿发挥作用之前，地面炮兵已经把歪斜的东西摆正了--烟雾的冠冕再次回来了。我再次俯冲，飞机再次在这片沼泽的天空中呻吟和摇摆。我身体的所有重量都压在那根杆子上，机器摇晃起来，正向右舷滑去。冕下现在在我的左上方弯曲着。

我们能坚持到最后吗？但我们怎么能做到呢？每次我把船粗暴地转过来时，在我还没来得及回过头来时，大量的长枪短炮就跟着我了。每一次冠冕都被放回原位，炮弹的爆裂又使飞机重新摇晃起来。每一次，当我往下看时，我又看到了同样令人眩晕的缓慢上升的金色气泡，这些气泡似乎都准确地集中在我的飞机上。怎么会这样，我们仍然是完整的？我开始相信我们。'我毕竟是无懈可击的，'我对自己说。'我正在获胜。'从一秒钟到另一秒钟，我越来越是赢家了。

'有人受伤了吗？

'没有人。

他们没有受伤。他们是无懈可击的。他们是胜利者。我是一支胜利队伍的主人。从那一刻起，每一次爆炸对我来说似乎不是在威胁我们，而是在激励我们。每一次，在一瞬间，我都觉得我的飞机被炸成了碎片；但每一次，它都会对控制装置作出新的反应，我就像一个马车夫用力拉着缰绳一样护着它前进。我开始放松下来，一股喜悦之情涌上心头。有足够的时间让我觉得恐惧不过是由巨大的撞击引起的身体僵硬，当每一次缓冲之后，我都会立刻感到一阵轻松。我应该先后感受到冲击，然后是恐惧，然后是解脱；但没有时间了。我感受到的是震惊，然后是瞬间的解脱。震惊，解脱。恐惧，这个中间步骤，没有了。在震惊之后的那一秒，我没有生活在对即将到来的死亡的期待中，而是生活在刚刚过去的那一秒所产生的对复活的信念中。我生活在一种喜悦的滑流中，在我的欢欣鼓舞之后。一种超乎想象的快乐在我身上流淌。仿佛每过一秒，我的生命就被重新赋予。仿佛每过一秒，我的生命就变得更加鲜活。我在生活。我还活着。我仍然活着。我是生命本身的源泉。我被生活的陶醉所激荡。'战斗的热度'是一个熟悉的短语；生活的热度是一个更真实的短语。'我想知道，'我对自己说，'那些在下面向我们开火的德国人是否知道他们正在我们体内创造生命？

我的所有坦克都被打穿了，包括汽油和石油。除此之外，我们似乎还很健全。杜特尔特喊道，他已经通过了，我再次抬起头，计算着与云层的距离。我抬起船头，再一次让飞机在爬升时呈 "之 "字形。我再次向地球投去一瞥。我所看到的一切我将不会忘记。飞机上到处都是噼里啪啦喷出的短芯火焰--速射炮。彩色的球仍然在一个巨大的蓝色水族馆中向上漂浮。阿拉斯像铁砧上的铁一样发出暗红色的光芒，这种火焰由地下储藏物、人的汗水、人的发明、人的艺术、人的记忆和遗产提供，所有这些都在那根单一的羽状物的红色上升中编织起来，把它们变成火和灰，随风飘散。

我已经飞过了第一包薄雾。金色的箭仍在升起，刺入云腹，就在云层围绕着我的时候，我从一个开口中看到了那一幕的最后一瞥。有那么一瞬间，阿拉斯上空的火焰在夜色中升起，像大教堂中的一盏灯一样闪闪发光。阿拉斯的那盏灯是在为一种崇拜而燃烧，但也是有代价的。到了明天，它将吞噬阿拉斯，而它自己也将被吞噬。

一切都好吗，杜特尔特？

'一流的，队长。2-40，谢谢。我们在20分钟内将无法从这片云层中下来。然后我将沿着塞纳河的某个地方找到一个地标。

'一切都好吗，炮手？

'一切正常，长官。

'对你来说不是太热，是吗？

'不，我想不会，长官。

对他来说很难说。但他感觉很好。我想到了加沃耶的炮手。在这还是一场非常奇怪的战争的时候，我们曾经在德国上空做长途侦察。有一天晚上，在莱茵河上空，八十盏探照灯发现了加沃耶的飞机，并在它周围建造了一个巨大的教堂。高射炮开始射击，突然，加沃尔听到他的炮手在自言自语--因为对讲机很难说是一条私人线路。那人在喃喃自语地说着一段对话：'你以为你已经在附近了，是吗？我会告诉你一些你从未见过的东西！"。'他感觉很好，那个炮手。

我继续往前飞，慢慢地深吸一口气。我把我的肺填到了底部。再次呼吸的感觉真好。有很多事情我都要去了解一下。首先，我想到了阿里巴巴。不，那不是真的。我首先想到的是我的主人，我的农夫。我仍然期待着问他，他认为一个飞行员必须要看多少种仪器。对不起，但我对有些事情很固执。一百零三。他绝对猜不到。这提醒了我。当你的油箱被刺穿时，看看你的仪表是无妨的。精彩的坦克！他们的橡胶涂层已经完成了它们的工作。它们的橡胶涂层已经完成了它们的工作；它们自动收缩并堵住了子弹和炮弹碎片造成的洞。我也看了看我的稳定器。我们飞过的这片云是一片风暴云。它把我们震得很厉害。

'认为我们现在可以下来了吗？

'再过10分钟。最好再等10分钟。

我当然可以再等10分钟。. . 是的，我想到了Alias。他还在等我们吗，我想知道？前几天我们已经迟到了半个小时。半小时通常比你应该的时间长：这意味着麻烦。我下了飞机，跑去和小组成员会合，他们正在吃饭。我打开门，跌坐在阿里亚斯旁边的椅子上。这时，他的叉子上有一簇面条，正准备把它收起来。他跳了起来，仔细看了看我，然后一动不动地坐着，面条挂在他的叉子上。

'嗯，我. . . 很高兴见到你，'他说。

然后他把面条塞进了嘴里。

在我看来，这位少校有一个严重的错误。他顽固地坚持要检查他的飞行员的出勤情况。他要检查我。他将以令人尴尬的耐心坐在那里看着我，等着我说出我的平凡观察。他将用纸和笔武装自己，决心不丢失一滴我可能带回来的灵丹妙药。

情报是杜特尔特的事，不是我的事。他是观察者，我是飞行员。从他坐的地方，他可以直接看到下面。他看到很多东西--货车、驳船、坦克、士兵、大炮、马匹、火车站、火车、站长。从我坐的地方，我从一个角度看世界。我看到云、海、河、山、太阳。我看得很粗略，只得到一个总体印象。

'少校，你和我一样清楚，一个飞行员......'

'来吧，来吧，Saint-Ex! 你毕竟还是看到了一些东西'。

I . . . 哦，是的! 火焰。村庄在燃烧。少校不觉得这很有趣吗？

'胡说八道！整个国家都在着火。还有什么？

为什么阿利亚斯必须如此残忍？

二十二
我从这次出动中带回的东西不是报告的问题。当阿利亚斯审查我的时候，我将像一个站在黑板前的小学生一样不及格。我看起来会很不高兴，但我不会不高兴。不快乐在我身后。当炮弹开始在飞机上爆炸时，它就在那一瞬间逃走了。如果我早一秒钟回头，我就会错过认识自己。

我永远也不会知道此刻充满我内心的那股感情。我将回到我的同类身边。我要回家了。我就像一个家庭主妇，她已经买好了东西，正在回家的路上，她的心思在即将让她的家人高兴的美味晚餐上。她的市场篮子在她的手臂上左摇右摆。

即使在这片云的肚子里，我也在从市场回家的路上。少校毕竟是对的。当他用一种似乎是在说'然后你向右转第一个弯，在那里你会看到一家烟草店'的声音送我们离开时，他的声音是在正确的音调上。我的良心得到了安宁。我的口袋里有少校的火柴--或者更确切地说，杜特尔特的口袋里有。我无法想象杜特尔特是如何记住他所看到的一切的。但那是他的事。我想的是更严重的事情。我们将登陆；如果敌人不打扰我们，突然冲向另一个战场，我将向拉科代尔挑战，在象棋上打败他。他不喜欢输，我也不喜欢。我也一样，但我一定会赢。

昨天，恕我直言，拉科代尔变得很紧张。至少，有一点紧张。他为了安慰自己而变得紧张。在一次出航后，他忘了松开起落架，把飞机放在了肚子上。不幸的是，阿利亚斯看到他这么做了；但他没有说一句话。而拉科代尔，一个有着长期经验的飞行员，一直站在旁边，等待着阿利亚斯向他求助。他站在一旁，希望阿利亚斯能骂他。猛烈的抨击会对他有好处。这也会让他爆发出来。这将使他能够把对自己的愤怒发泄出来，这种愤怒在他心中不断膨胀。但阿利亚斯只是无奈地摇了摇头。阿利亚斯的心思都在飞机上，而不是在飞行员身上。对这位少校来说，这次事故是一种无名的不幸，是对集团征收的统计税。它是那些即使是最有经验的飞行员也会心不在焉的时刻之一的影响。这是一种不公正，而拉科代尔是其受害者。除了这次失误，拉科代尔的职业记录是干净的。阿利亚斯知道这一点，而困扰他的只是那架飞机。他不假思索地自动转向拉科代尔，问他认为损失有多严重。而我能感觉到拉科代尔压抑的怒火在这个问题上上升了一个度。你亲切地把手放在施刑者的肩上，对他说：'你认为你的受害者有多大的痛苦？真的，人类的心是深不可测的。征求施暴者同情的那只友好的手使施暴者感到气愤。他向受害者抛出一个黑色的眼神，并为自己没有把她干掉而感到遗憾。

我正在回家的路上。2-33组是我的家。而且我了解我的同类。我不会对拉科代尔有任何误解。拉科代尔也不会对我产生误解。没有什么比我们之间的情感共同体更强大的了，当我说 "我们2-33小组 "时，这种情感贯穿了我。颗粒，我们是的碎片，在集团的事实中收集和拥有意义。

在云中飞行，我想到了加沃耶和霍切德。我被将我与他们联系在一起的情感共同体所激荡。我想知道Gavoille的情况。他是什么样的人？Gavoille身上有一种奇妙的泥土气息。一段记忆突然掠过我，让我充满温暖。在奥尔孔特，加沃耶也被安置在一个农民家里。有一天他对我说：'农夫的妻子前几天杀了一头猪。她想让我们尝尝她的血肉香肠。

我们三个人坐在一起，吃着黑得发亮的猪皮--加沃耶、以色列和我。Gavoille边吃边说："我为农夫的妻子买了这个，以为她会喜欢它。给她写点东西吧'。那是我的一本书的副本。我丝毫不觉得尴尬。我高兴地在上面写了字，以取悦他们俩。Gavoille坐在那里抓着他的腿。伊斯雷尔在塞他的烟斗。农夫的妻子似乎很高兴有一本作者题写的书。厨房里弥漫着香肠的味道。我有点紧张，因为白葡萄酒让人兴奋。

我丝毫不觉得奇怪，尽管我为一本书题字--在其他情况下，这件事总是让我感到不安。我一点也不觉得自己格格不入。尽管有了这本书，我并不觉得自己是一个作者或一个局外人。我不是一个局外人。以色列人看着我，在我写下自己的名字时，露出了愉快的笑容。Gavoille继续挠着他的腿。我对他们的态度感到感激。那本书可能会让他们把我看成一个外人。但它没有。我仍然是他们中的一员。

对生活的审视这个概念对我来说一直很讨厌。如果我不是一个参与者，我是什么？为了成为这样的人，我必须参与。我被那些与我一起参与的人身上的品质所滋养。这种品质是集团的人从来没有想过的--不是因为谦虚，而是因为他们不会屈尊去衡量它。加沃耶不怀疑自己，以色列也不怀疑。这些人中的每一个人都是由他的工作、他的行业、他的职责编织成的网。在这种情况下吃的那根烟熏香肠，也被织进了这张网。这些人的存在是密集的，充满意义的，它温暖了我的心。我能够与他们静静地坐在一起。和他们一起喝我的白葡萄酒。在我的书上签名，而不会因此将自己与他们隔绝。世界上没有什么东西强大到足以破坏这种友谊。

我曾经提到，因为我是一个作家，我可能在这场战争中享有某些优势，某些自由。例如，我可以在我不再赞同我被命令做的事情的那一天，自由地离开2-33小组。但这种自由我几乎是以恐怖的方式拒绝的。它不过是做一个旁观者的自由，也就是说，是不存在的自由。除了接受义务，没有任何成长。

我们在法国几乎都死于没有实质支持的智慧。Gavoille存在。他爱，恨，欢喜，抱怨。他被编织在一起并构成他的存在的线所塑造和提高。正如我和他坐在餐桌上，从我们分享的脆皮香肠中获得快乐一样，我也从将我们集团的人融合成一个共同存在的工艺义务中获得快乐。我爱2-33小组。我并不像观众那样爱它，因为我在看一个漂亮的奇观。我不会给眼镜一个按钮。我爱2-33集团，因为我是它的一部分，它也是我的一部分，因为它滋养了我，我也为滋养它做出了贡献。

现在，我从阿拉斯飞回家，比以往任何时候都更多地与2-33集团交织在一起。我已经与它形成了另一种联系。我加强了与它的那种共融的感觉，这种感觉是值得高兴的，也是不言而喻的。我们每个人都或多或少地以同样的方式冒着生命危险。以色列已经消失了。似乎很肯定的是，在今天的出游过程中，我也应该消失。除了能在他们的餐桌旁坐下来和他们一起沉默，我通过这次在天空中的摆动赢得了什么？这种权利是花钱买来的；但它是一种宝贵的权利。它是存在的权利，因此可以逃避不存在。

然而，一想到几分钟后阿利亚斯提出问题时我将结结巴巴，我就脸红心跳。我知道，我将感到羞愧。少校会认为我有点白痴。我因期待而感到的羞愧是真的。然而......。我又一次出发了--这次是去阿拉斯--寻找我善意的证据。在这次出征中，我冒着肉体的危险。我冒着风险，因为我非常确信我将失去它。我把一切都交给了游戏规则，以便把它们变成游戏规则以外的东西。既然如此，我就赢得了在少校审视我时显得羞怯的权利。也就是说，我有权利参与。与其他人交织在一起。与他们交流。给予和接受。成为比自己更多的人。拥有这种在我内心强烈涌动的充实感。感受我对团体的爱，这种爱不是来自外部的冲动，而是内在的东西，永远不会被表现出来--除了在告别晚宴上。在告别晚宴上，你肯定会有点醉意，酒精带来的仁慈肯定会让你向你的朋友们靠拢，就像一棵树，树枝被礼物压弯了。我对集团的爱是不需要定义的。它是由纽带织成的。它是我的实质。我属于集团，而集团也属于我。

当我想到集团的时候，我不可能不想到霍希德。霍奇德在这场战争中完全奉献了自己。可能比起我们任何人，霍奇代永久地居住在我所努力争取的那种状态中。Hochedé已经达到了我们其他人所追求的目标，也是我所要达到的目标。

Hochedé是一名前中士，最近晋升为少尉。我可以想象，他的文化水平很低。他无法对自己做出任何说明。但他是有构造的，他是完整的。当 "职责 "这个词用在霍切德身上时，就失去了所有的轰炸性。任何一个人都会乐于接受他的职责，就像Hochedé那样。

当我想到霍切德时，我责备自己所有琐碎的放弃，我的疏忽，我的懒惰，以及我的知识主义的时刻，也就是怀疑主义。这在我身上不是美德的表现，而是智慧的妒忌。我希望能像霍切德那样完全存在。一棵树牢固地扎根于它的根部是一件美丽的事情。霍歇德的持久性是一件美丽的事。霍希德永远不会让人失望。

志愿者？我们所有的出动都是志愿者。对我们其他人来说，原因是模糊的需要相信自己。通过志愿服务，我们有点超越了自己。霍切德本质上是一名志愿者。在本质上，他就是这场战争。这一事实是如此明显，以至于当一架飞机注定要被牺牲时，少校会自动想到霍奇德。'看这里，霍奇德。. . .' 霍切德沉浸在这场战争中，就像一个僧侣沉浸在宗教中一样。他是为谁而战？为他自己，因为他与战争、与集团、与法国交织在一起。霍切德与某种物质融合在一起，而这种物质，也就是他自己的意义，必须被拯救。在霍切德的层面上，生命和死亡在某种程度上是同一件事。霍切德已经是两者的一部分。也许没有意识到，他几乎不惧怕死亡。坚持下去；让别人坚持下去--这才是最重要的。对霍切德来说，生命和死亡已经调和。

我是以色列的一部分，是加沃耶的一部分，是霍切德的一部分，他们也是我的一部分。我是2-33集团的一部分，它也是我的一部分。我是我国家的一部分，它也是我的一部分。我的国家和我是一体的。2-33集团所有的人都与他们的国家是一体的。

二十三
我有了很大的改变。在过去的日子里，我一直很痛苦，阿利亚斯少校--在装甲车入侵没有遇到任何抵抗的最后几天，当我们的牺牲品使集团军23名成员中的17名牺牲时。在我看来，我们--尤其是你--同意扮演死人的角色，只是因为演出需要死人的编外人员。我一直很痛苦，阿利亚斯少校；而且我错了。

特别是你，但我们其他人也一样，坚持履行一项职责，而这项职责的精神对我们来说已经不复存在了。你凭直觉驱使我们不是为了胜利，那是不可能的，而是为了自我实现。你和我们一样清楚，我们带回来的情报永远不会到达参谋部。但你在拯救那些我们都无法察觉的仪式。每次你在我们发现的货车、驳船、火车上审视我们，冷静地审视我们，好像我们的回答可能有什么用处一样，在我看来，你似乎很虚伪，令人反感。但你是对的，阿利亚斯少校。

在我知道我在阿拉斯学到的东西之前，我对我再次飞过的这股难民潮没有任何责任。除了那些我给予的人，我不可能对任何人有约束力。除了与我有关系的人，我不了解任何其他人。我的存在只限于我被我的根部的泉水滋养的程度。我与公路上的那群人有联系，他们也与我有联系。以每小时三百英里的速度和六百英尺的高度，现在我已经从云层中下来了，我已经与那群人融为一体。我，在下降的夜幕中飞行，就像一个牧羊人，在一个眼神中清点、收集并将他散落的羊群再次焊接成一个羊群。那群人不再是一群人，而是一个民族。

我们居住在失败的腐烂中，但我却充满了庄严而持久的欢欣，仿佛我刚从圣礼中走出来。我沉浸在混乱之中，但我已经赢得了一场胜利。有哪一个集团军的飞行员在飞回国的时候，胸中没有这种胜利的感觉？就在这一天，当佩尼科从一个上午的低空飞行中回来，向我讲述这件事时，他是这样说的

每当他们的一个地面炮台对我来说似乎瞄得太准了，我就会在地面上放大，全速直奔炮台而去，我的炮口喷出的火光会把他们的红光吹灭，就像蜡烛一样。在他们意识到这一点之前，我已经在他们的炮组上了，你会认为我是一颗爆裂的炮弹。砰！砰！砰 队员们会四散开来，向各个方向扑去。我发誓，我觉得自己就像在打散九宫格一样。佩尼科，胜利的船长，高兴地咆哮着，就像加沃耶的炮手一样高兴，当他们飞过敌人的探照灯穹顶时，就像在剑拱下行进的军事婚礼派对。

'94号，上尉'。

杜特尔特沿着塞纳河找到了一个地标，我们现在下降到了四百英尺。在我脚下以每小时300英里的速度流动着，地球在我的玻璃挡风玻璃上画出了巨大的小麦和苜蓿的矩形，巨大的森林三角形。被飞机干线分割开来，破碎的风景向左右两边流动，使我感到一种奇怪的满足。塞纳河在下面闪闪发光，当我从一个角度穿过它蜿蜒的河道时，它似乎加速过去，并在自己身上旋转。河流的漩涡在我眼里就像田野里的镰刀的曲线一样可爱。我觉得自己恢复了本色。我是我的船的船长。油箱还在坚持。我肯定能从佩尼科那里赢得扑克骰子的饮料，然后在国际象棋上击败拉科代尔。

我不可能不在脑海中把飞机和地球这两个世界进行对比。这一天，我带领杜特尔特和我的炮手超越了有理智的人都会停下来的界限。我们看到了火光冲天的法国。我们看到了阳光照耀着大海。我们在高海拔地区已经变老。我们曾把目光投向遥远的地球，就像投向博物馆的箱子。我们曾在阳光下与敌人战斗机的尘土嬉戏。此后，我们再次降落到地面上，把自己投入到大屠杀中。我们牺牲了我们能提供的东西。在这种牺牲中，我们对自己的了解甚至超过了在寺院里呆了十年后应该做的事情。我们在寺院里呆了十年后又出来了。

在我们走了这么远的时间里，我们飞过的难民大队也许已经前进了500码。在比他们把一辆汽车从沟里抬出来再重新上路所需的时间更短的时间里，在比许多司机不耐烦地坐在车轮上等待车流从十字路口排空的时间更短的时间里，我们应该安全地回到我们的避难所。

一下子我们就跨越了整个失败。我们超越了它，朝圣者比他们辛苦穿越的沙漠更强大，因为在他们心中，他们已经到达了他们的目的地--圣城。这个夜幕降临，将把这群不快乐的难民停在痛苦的马厩里。这群人将挤在一起寻求安慰，但他们会向谁，向什么呼喊？而我们却向着同志们和一种庆祝活动飞去。从最简陋的小屋里射出的灯火可以将最粗暴的冬夜变成圣诞夜。我们在这架飞机上要去一个会有同志欢迎我们的地方。我们在这架飞机上要去参加我们日常饮食的交流会。

这一天的疲惫和幸福都是足够的。我将把我的船交给地勤人员，因为她的伤痕使它变得高贵。我将脱掉我那笨重的飞行服；由于现在从佩尼科那里赢得那杯酒已经太晚了，我将直接去餐桌，在我的战友中用餐。我们迟到了。迟到的人永远不会回来。迟到了，是吗？如果晚了，那就太晚了。那就没有什么可以为他们做的了。黑夜已经把他们带入了永恒。

然而，在晚餐时间，当集团对其死者进行普查时，有一件事是为他们做的：他们被变得比以往更英俊。他们被永远地勾勒出他们最灿烂的笑容。但我们在这个世界上却放弃了这种特权。我们将不知从哪里冒出来，像恶魔一样，像森林里的偷猎者一样。少校的手将停止，他的面包已经到了嘴边的一半。他将凝视着我们。也许他会说："哦！. . . 哦，你在这里！' 其他的人什么也不说。他们几乎不会向我们投来一瞥。

人不会真的变老。当你回到他们身边时，人还是和你离开他们时一样纯洁。哦，你在这里，你是我们的同类！这句话想而不说，是出于感情的细腻。我们从我们的出征中回家，准备好了我们无声的回报。它的质量是独一无二的，因为它是爱的质量。我们不承认它是爱。一般来说，当我们想到爱的时候，它意味着一种更加动荡不安的悲哀。但这是名副其实的爱--一个由线织成的网，我们在其中得到了满足。

二十四
当我回到我的铺位时，我发现我的农夫和他的妻子及侄女正在吃饭。

'告诉我，'我对他说；'你认为一个飞行员要照看多少仪器？

'我怎么知道？不是我的行业，'他回答。'不过，以我的思维方式，一定会有一些缺失。那些你赢得战争的东西。吃晚饭了吗？

我说我在餐厅吃过晚饭了，但他已经不听我的了。

'你，我们的侄女，在那里。往前推一点。给船长腾出空间。

我被安排在那个女孩和她姨妈之间坐下。除了集团之外，还有一些东西是我的一部分。通过我的战友们，我融入了整个国家。爱是一粒种子：它只需发芽，它的根就会越扎越深。

我的农夫默默地掰开面包，把它递给大家。他不慌不忙，朴实无华，白天的忧虑给他穿上了尊严的衣服。也许这是最后一次在这张桌子上，他与我们分享他的面包，就像崇拜的行为。我坐在那里想到了那片广阔的田野，这些物质就是从那里出来的。明天这些田地将被敌人入侵。哦，不会有人的喧嚣和武器的碰撞！我想，这就是我们的生活。大地是广阔的。我的农民不会看到更多的入侵，而只是在田野边缘的广阔天空中看到一个孤独的哨兵。从外观上看，什么都没有改变；但一个迹象就足以告诉人，一切都变了。

穿过谷物田地的风仍然会像在海上运行的风一样。但谷物中的风是一种更奇妙的扫荡，因为当它拂过麦子的顶端时，它对财产进行了一次普查。它评估了一个未来。谷物中的风是对配偶的爱抚，它是和平之手抚摸她的头发。

明天，这些麦子将发生变化。麦子是比肉体的饲料更重要的东西。滋养人和养肥牛是不一样的。面包有不止一种意义。我们已经学会在面包中看到人与人之间交流的手段，因为人在一起掰面包。我们已经学会在面包中看到劳动尊严的象征，因为面包是用眉毛的汗水换来的。我们已经学会在面包中看到怜悯的基本容器，因为它是分给穷人的面包。没有什么比人与人之间分享的面包更美味的了。我突然看到，这种精神食物中包含的能量，这种由那片麦田产生的精神面包，正处于危险之中。也许明天，当他再次掰开面包，把它送上餐桌时，我的农夫将不会庆祝同样的家庭仪式。也许明天，他的面包将不会给餐桌旁的这些人带来同样的光芒。因为面包就像灯油：它的优点在于它所发出的光。

我看着身旁美丽的侄女，对自己说："面包在这个孩子身上，被转化为慵懒的优雅。它被转化为谦逊。它被转化为温柔的沉默。而明天，也许，这同样的面包，由于在那片麦子海洋的边缘升起了一个灰色的制服，虽然它滋养了这盏同样的灯，但也许将不再发出这同样的光辉。这面包中的力量将从它身上消失了'。

这一天，我曾为保护那盏灯中的光亮而开战，而不是为了养活那个身体。我为面包在我的同胞家中被转化成的特殊辐射而开战。在那个沉思的小女孩身上，深深打动我的是精神的非实体性外衣。是她脸上的五官构成的神秘的整体。这是书页上的诗，胜过书页本身。

小女孩感到我在看着她。她抬眼看着我。在我看来，她对我笑了。她的微笑几乎没有超过水面上的呼吸；但那微弱的光亮已经足够了。我被感动了。我感到，神秘地存在着一个属于这个地方的灵魂，而不是其他地方。这里有一种和平，我对自己喃喃自语："沉默王国的和平。那笑容是闪亮的麦子的光芒。

侄女的脸又不慌不忙，掩盖了它深不可测的深度。农夫的妻子叹了口气，环视着我们，没有说话。农夫，他的心思在未来的日子里，坐在他泥土的智慧中。在这三个人的沉默背后，有一种内在的丰富，就像整个村庄在夜里沉睡的遗产--也像它，受到威胁。奇怪的是，我觉得自己对这种无形的财产负有责任，这种感觉很强烈。我走出家门，独自走在公路上，我带着一个负担，对我来说似乎很温柔，但并不沉重，就像一个在我怀里睡着的孩子。

我慢慢地走着，不在乎我走到哪里。我曾答应自己与我的村庄进行这次谈话；但现在我发现我没有什么可说的。我漫步徘徊，满脑子都是把我和我的人民联系在一起的想法。我与他们是一体的，他们与我也是一体的。那个递上面包的农夫并没有在餐桌上给我们送礼：他与我们分享，与我们交换面包，我们所有人都有自己的一份。通过这种分享，农夫并没有变穷，而是变富了。通过这种分享，他吃到了更好的面包，社区的面包。

我在公路上漫步和徘徊，在那些似乎没有希望的人中间充满了希望；然而即使如此，我也没有与其他人隔绝。我是他们希望中的一部分。的确，我们已经被打败了。诚然，一切都在悬而未决中。诚然，一切都受到了威胁。然而，尽管如此，我还是不能不在自己身上感受到胜利的宁静。矛盾的说法？我对术语不屑一顾。我就像佩尼科、霍切德、阿里亚斯、加沃耶一样。像他们一样，我没有语言来证明我的胜利感。但和他们一样，我也充满了责任感。什么人能够在同一时间感到自己有责任和无望呢？

失败。. . . 胜利。. . . 我不知道该如何理解这些术语。一个胜利使人高尚，另一个则使人堕落。一场失败使人丧命，另一场则带来生命。告诉我在你的胜利或失败中植入了什么种子，我将告诉你它的未来。生命不是由情况决定的，而是由变异决定的。我知道只有一种胜利是肯定的，那就是蕴藏在种子能量中的胜利。把种子播撒在广阔的黑土地上，种子就已经胜利了，尽管时间必须有助于麦子的胜利。

今天上午，法国是一支支离破碎的军队和混乱的人口。但是，如果在混乱的人群中，有一个由责任感驱动的单一意识，混乱就会消失。当一个人思考它的时候，岩石堆就不再是岩石堆了，在他的内心深处有一个大教堂的形象。如果黄土中埋藏着一颗种子，我也不会为它担忧。种子会排泄出泥土，而小麦会燃烧起来。

接受沉思的人将自己转化为种子。有发现的人拉着我的袖子，让我注意到它。发明的人宣扬他的发明。一个霍奇德人将如何表达自己或采取行动，我不知道，这也不重要。他肯定会传播他平静的信仰。我现在更清楚地看到的是胜利的首要因素。心里装着待建大教堂的人已经是胜利者了。寻求成为已建成的大教堂的司库的人，已经被打败了。胜利是爱的果实。只有爱能说什么脸会从泥土中出现。只有爱能引导人走向那张脸。智慧只有在为爱服务时才是有效的。

关于智力所起的作用，我们长期处于错误之中。我们忽视了人的实质。我们相信，卑贱的天性的美德可以帮助高尚的事业取得胜利，精明的自私可以使精神升华为牺牲，枯萎的心可以通过一阵风找到兄弟关系或爱。我们忽视了存在。


我从打败我们的装甲师那里学到了一个教训，可以在他们的战术手册中看到："一个装甲师应该像水一样向敌人移动。它应该轻轻地承受敌人的防御墙，只在没有遇到抵抗的地方前进。在地球的广袤中，人所占的空间很小。在法国，一堵连续的人墙将需要一亿名士兵。部队之间总是有空隙，而坦克则通过这些空隙前进。被阳光萦绕的种子永远不会在地上的石头之间找到它的路。而纯粹的逻辑学家，如果没有太阳吸引他，就会一直纠缠在他的逻辑中。装甲纵队应该采取什么方向来投入敌人的后方？我不知道。为了这个目的，装甲纵队应该是什么？它应该是海的重量压在堤坝上。

我们应该怎么做？这个。那个。这个或那个的相反。没有什么决定论可以支配未来。我们应该是什么？这是一个基本的问题，这个问题涉及精神而不是智慧。因为精神用将要出现的创造物浸染了智慧。后来，智慧被带到了创造物的床上。人类应该如何去建造有史以来的第一艘船？这个问题非常复杂。这艘船将在无数次的错误和摸索中诞生。但人应该是什么来建造这第一艘船呢？在这里，我从根本上抓住了创造的问题。商人。士兵。爱上了遥远的土地的前景。因为那时必然会有设计师和建造者从这种爱中诞生。他们将耗尽工人的精力，有朝一日推出一艘船。我们应该怎么做才能消灭一片森林？这个问题并不容易。要做什么？显然是森林大火。

明天我们法国人将进入失败的夜晚。愿我的国家在天亮时仍然存在。我们应该怎么做才能拯救我的国家？我不知道。矛盾的事情。我们的精神遗产必须得到保护，否则我们的人民将被剥夺他们的天才。我们的人民必须得到保护，否则我们的遗产就会丢失。由于没有办法在他们的公式中调和遗产和人民，逻辑学家们会受到诱惑，要么牺牲身体，要么牺牲灵魂。但我不想和逻辑学家扯上关系。我希望我的国家在黎明到来时，既能在肉体上也能在精神上存在。因此，我必须在这个方向上承受我所有的爱的重量。如果大海全力以赴，就没有什么通道不能为自己开辟。

我们因意识到将我们与我们的人民联系在一起的纽带而感到温暖--因此我们感到自己已经取得了胜利。我们知道，我们与其他人是一体的。但为了让其他人知道这一点，我们必须学会表达它。这是一个意识和语言的问题。这也是一个避免肤浅的逻辑和争论的言语陷阱的问题，在这种情况下，实质内容被破坏。最重要的是，我们决不能拒绝我们所属的任何部分。

因此，我在寂静的村夜里靠在墙上，从逃往阿拉斯的路上回家，在我看来，我从逃往阿拉斯的路上得到了启迪，我对自己施加了这些我永远不会背叛的规则。

既然我与法国人民是一体的，我就永远不会拒绝我的人民，无论他们做什么。我绝不在别人面前宣扬反对他们的言论。只要有可能为他们辩护，我就会为他们辩护。如果他们让我感到羞耻，我将把这种羞耻锁在心里，保持沉默。无论在这种时候，我对他们有什么想法，我都不会对他们作证。难道一个丈夫会挨家挨户向邻居喊话，说他的妻子是个荡妇吗？难道这样他就能维护自己的名誉吗？不是，因为他的妻子与他的家是一体的。不是的，因为他不能在她面前建立他的尊严。让他回家去找她，在那里解除他的怒气。

因此，我不会把自己从一场肯定会经常羞辱我的失败中剥离出来。我是法国的一部分，法国也是我的一部分。法国孕育了帕斯卡尔、雷诺阿、巴斯德、吉约梅、霍切德等人。她也带来了一些无能的人，他们是政治家，是骗子。但是，如果一个人宣布自己是第一个法国的一部分而不是另一个法国的一部分，那就太容易了。

失败使人分裂。失败使人解开束缚。在这种松绑中，存在着死亡的危险。我不会把灾难的责任推给那些与我想法不同的人，从而造成法国人之间的分裂。在没有法官的地方，指责是没有用的。所有法国人一起被打败了。我被打败了。霍希德被打败了。霍切德并没有把失败归咎于他人。霍切德对自己说：'我，霍切德，与法国融为一体的人，是弱者。与我霍切德一体的法国是软弱的。我在她体内软弱，她在我体内也软弱。霍切德非常清楚，一旦他开始区分他的人民和他自己，他就只荣耀自己。从那一刻起，作为一个家、一个家庭、一个集团、一个国家的一部分的霍奇代就不存在了：剩下的是作为沙漠一部分的霍奇代。

如果我在我的家庭的羞辱中承担了一份责任，我将能够影响我的家庭。它是我的一部分，正如我是它的一部分。但如果我拒绝它的羞辱，我的家庭就必须崩溃；而我将独自徘徊，充满虚荣，但却是一个像尸体一样空虚的躯壳。

我拒绝非存在。我的目的是为了存在。如果我想成为一个人，我必须从承担起责任开始。就在几个小时前，我还是个盲人。我是痛苦的。但现在我能够更清楚地判断。就像我拒绝抱怨其他法国人一样，因为现在我觉得自己与法国是一体的，所以我不再能够设想法国有权利抱怨世界上其他国家。每个人都要对所有人负责。法国对所有的世界负责。如果法国是法国，她可能会作为共同的理想站在世界面前，让世界团结在一起。她可能会成为世界拱门上的基石。如果法国有法国的味道，有法国的辐射力，整个世界就会被吸引到一场抵抗中，而抵抗的矛头就是法国。从今以后，我拒绝对世界的指责。假设在某个特定的时刻，世界缺乏一个灵魂，那么法国就有义务充当世界的灵魂。

全世界人的精神共融并没有对我们有利。但是，如果我们站在人与人之间的交流上，我们本应该拯救世界和自己。在这项任务中，我们失败了。每个人都要对所有人负责。每个人都对自己负责。每个人都要对所有的人负责。我现在第一次明白了宗教的奥秘，我所宣称的文明就是从这里诞生的："承担人的罪孽。每个人都要承担所有人的罪过。

既然如此，我将把我的文明所赋予我的义务执行到底。我将认为，我不仅要对自己的弱点负责，还要对敌人的狂热负责。承认这种责任，既不是软弱，也不是温情脉脉。它是要遵守一个行动的原则。如果我们认为自己对我们的空中大炮的冻结负有责任，我们的空中大炮就不会冻结。但是，当我们宣称自己对别人的过失是无辜的，我们就失去了影响那些别人和劝说他们生产无瑕疵大炮的权力。如果我以致命性为借口为自己开脱，我就会使自己受到致命性的影响。就我而言，我拒绝这种屈从。宿命是不存在的。我被赋予了影响我所构成的整体的力量。我是人类社会的一个组成部分。

XXV
一个抱怨异教徒存在的宗教在我们看来是荒谬的。除了在异教徒中，哪里会有宗教被招募？一个文明就像一个宗教：它是一个种子，它的功能是排水和转换。我的文明和它所产生的基督教价值观因我的失败而处于危险之中。曾几何时，这些价值观散发着能量。为什么它们无法在我的敌人中发挥作用？

对我来说，把所有的责任都归咎于我的敌人是令人讨厌的。我不喜欢为了谴责狼而去扮演羔羊的角色。狼是行动。羔羊是惯性。扮演羔羊可能会抚慰我的良心，但它使我成为受害者。受害者的角色对我来说是令人讨厌的。

曾经有一段时间，我的文明是行动。它改变了人类，解放了奴隶，打倒了残忍的人，统治了整个帝国。而我却要哭哭啼啼地抱怨，说自己是一只可怜的受欺负的羔羊吗？我不觉得我生来就是为了扮演这个悲惨的角色。如果我是软弱的，原因是在某处我对曾经使我强大的规则感到虚假。我知道发生了什么。我等待着，直到我处于危险之中，才想到我的文明。一旦危险来临，我就躲在我的文明后面。'什么！' 我哭了。'你对攻击如此美丽的大教堂不感到羞耻吗？但我早已不是那座大教堂的建造者了。我一直以司铎的身份生活在里面，作为牧师。这就是说，作为一个被打败的人。我一直在利用它的宁静，它的宽容，它的温暖。我是一个寄生虫。它对我来说不过是一个让我感到舒适和安全的地方。

我的文明给了我相信人类社会的权利。被困于此，我曾向这个社会呼喊求救。我哭着说，我的敌人正在背叛我们的社会。但我的朋友们却不愿意做其他事情。因此他们也背叛了它。我对他们的背叛充满了愤慨。但我自己难道没有叛国罪吗？

当我呼喊的时候，我已经不知道我在呼喊什么了。我的文明是建立在对每个人身上的东西的尊重之上的，它称之为人。但我却让 "人 "的概念腐烂了。我自己把人和个人混为一谈。当我谈到人的共同体时，我已经不知道我在说什么了。我所谈论的可能是一个奴隶市场--因为我把我的社区看作是一个单纯的数字总和，而不是一个存在。我把它看成是一种单纯的自然现象。石头堆里的石头是没有意义的；它们被它们构成的大教堂赋予了意义。群众中的人是没有意义的；他们因人的存在而被赋予了尊严。正因为如此，我的文明曾经并一直努力向人们揭示人，定义那个普遍存在的人。而 "人 "作为个人所敬重的对象被提升，反过来也提升了个人的地位。我的文明教我尊重的是作为每个人固有的品质的人。

当我自己不再理解这一点时，我的敌人怎么会理解呢？当我自己不再谈论人的权利，而在口头上谈论集体的权利、大众的权利时，我的敌人又如何理解呢？在这里和那里，我和我的同类仍然保留着一个模糊的真理概念。例如，我们仍然同意，一百个人应该冒着生命危险去拯救一个被埋葬的矿工的生命；如果这些人中有十个人死亡，他们的死亡也是有益的，因为他们是在向人致敬。我们认识到，获救的矿工可以被要求帮助救援另一个被埋的矿工--因为获救的不是他这个人，而是人这个人。

然而，渐渐地，我已经忘记了人。

我的文明曾宣称所有的人都是平等的。但当我忘记了 "人"，我就不再知道我的话的含义了。人在某些方面是平等的。石头在大教堂里是平等的。士兵和队长在国家中是平等的。人在人身上是平等的。正是这种特定的平等要求医生，无论他多么杰出，都要冒着生命危险去治疗一个被瘟疫感染的无名氏。这个无名氏不是一个人，他是人的代表。他不是政治个体，也不是经济个体，而是严格意义上的人，他是医生照顾的对象，也是医生的平等。我的文明禁止我奴役人，也就是说，奴役人。它禁止我在个人向上努力的道路上设置任何障碍，也就是说，阻止存在于个人中的 "人 "通过他的创造使人类变得高贵，使人类社会变得丰富。人选择了这个或那个个体作为人的表达的容器，我无权阻止这个容器的通过。真正的平等是存在于每个人身上的人所拥有的权利方面的平等。

我的文明意味着人的自由。每个人都可以在其中自由地阐述在他的意识中形成的新真理，提出新的诗歌、新的理论、在他身上诞生的新歌。任何暴君都不能迫使他沉默。因为通过他，是人在创造。但我的文明也保证个人不受其他个人的总和可能行使的暴政的影响。单一个体压迫大众是不可容忍的。但同样不能容忍的是，大众压制了在单个人身上工作的人的创造性冲动。

但我，忘记了人，通过断言我的自由必须停止在对我的邻居的自由造成伤害的地方。这种看似理想的做法是没有意义的，因为事实上没有一个人的行为可以不涉及其他人。如果我，作为一个士兵，自残了，我就会被枪毙。一个孤立的个体是不存在的。悲伤的人让别人也悲伤。

但最重要的是，忘记了人我就忘记了牺牲的真正意义。如果我们要从一个比自己更伟大的整体中汲取我们的物质，从它那里获得我们的意义，我们必须首先看到它的存在。人在接受之前必须给予，在居住之前必须建造。对比自己更伟大的东西的馈赠就是我的文明所称的牺牲。如果我坚持只为自己付出，我将一无所获。我将不会建造任何我将成为其一部分的东西，因此我将一无所有。之后，当你来找我，要求我为某项事业而死，我将拒绝死亡。我自己的事业要求我活着。哪来的爱的冲动可以补偿我的死亡呢？人为了一个家而死，而不是为了墙壁和桌子。人是为大教堂而死，不是为石头而死。人是为人民而死，不是为暴民而死。人为爱而死，如果人是社区拱门上的基石。人是为他所关心的生活而死的。

这里有一个奥秘，就像婴儿的乳汁的奥秘。母亲给了孩子。通过她的给予，她创造了她的爱。为了创造爱，我们必须从牺牲开始。之后，做出牺牲的是爱。但我们必须迈出第一步。

当我出发去阿拉斯时，我要求先接受再付出。我的要求是徒劳的。我们必须在接受之前给予，在居住之前建设。通过我对阿拉斯的馈赠，我创造了我对我的同类的爱，就像母亲用她的乳汁创造了乳房。起初，心是一片荒漠。孩子笑了，心就被填满了。

我从阿拉斯回来的时候，已经和我的农夫家庭编织了联系。通过他侄女的微笑，我看到了我村里的小麦。在我的村庄的帮助下，我看到了我的国家。在我的国家的帮助下，我看到了所有其他国家。我回来是为了在一个选择人作为其拱门基石的文明中占据一席之地。我回来是为了在2-33小组中占有一席之地，这个小组自愿为挪威而战。我回来是为了成为那些因其他国家的财富而变得更富有--而不是更贫穷--的人之一。强大的网络不惧怕多样性；它乐于看到组成它的各条线的多样性。在信仰的时代，大教堂能够像吸收圣人一样轻松地吸收石像鬼进入其颂歌。荷兰种植郁金香，西班牙唱着火焰歌，挪威的圣诞节下着雪--所有这些都让我感到充实，因为我是人的一部分。

这一天，我穿上了为神服务的衣服，而我对神的存在却视而不见。阿拉斯解开了我的眼睛。和集团的其他成员一样，我不再是盲人。也许明天阿利亚斯会命令我再飞一次。如果在明天黎明时分，我再次战斗，我将最终知道我为什么战斗。不是为了胜利，因为战争已经失败了，而是为了实现自我价值。

我的眼睛已经解封了，我现在想记住它们所看到的东西。我觉得需要一个简单的信条，以便我可以记住。

我相信个人要服从于人，特殊要服从于普遍。

我相信，对普遍性的崇拜使我们的特殊财富得到升华和提高，并建立了唯一真正的秩序，即生命的秩序。一棵树是一个单位，尽管它的树根和树枝是不同的；它是一个秩序的对象。

我认为，对特殊性的崇拜是对死亡的崇拜，因为它把它的秩序建立在相似性上。它错把部分的同一性当作存在的统一性。这就是为什么每一种外来的生活方式、每一个外来的民族、每一种外来的思想对它都是一种侮辱。它的秩序仅仅是这样，它摧毁了大教堂，只是为了把石头有序地排成一排。因此，我将与所有那些试图将一种特定的生活方式强加给其他生活方式、将一个特定的民族强加给其他民族、将一个特定的种族强加给其他种族、将一个特定的思想体系强加给其他思想体系的人进行斗争。

我相信，人的首要地位是唯一的平等和唯一拥有意义的自由的基础。我相信每个人固有的人的权利是平等的。我相信，只有自由才能通过个人的工具使人的创造成为可能。平等不是身份。自由不是个人对人的抬举。我将与所有那些试图将人的自由置于个人或个人大众之下的人作斗争。

我相信，我的文明所称的 "慈善 "是为了实现自己的目的而给予人的牺牲。慈善是在个人的平庸中给人的礼物。它使人得到满足。象征性的是，在濯足星期四，主教为穷人洗脚。这个姿态中没有对个人的崇拜。从中产生的慈善和虔诚对我们来说既不是自卑也不是蛊惑。它们只是在承认人的存在这一事实中抬高了个人。我将与所有那些坚持认为我的慈善是向平庸致敬的人作斗争，他们将摧毁人，从而将个人禁锢在不可救药的平庸中。

我将为人而战。反对人的敌人--但也反对我自己。

二十六
我们在午夜时分再次集合，接受命令。2-33组的人都很困。壁炉里的火焰已经变成了灰烬。小组似乎还在坚持，但这是一种错觉。霍切德忧郁地盯着他那块宝贵的手表。佩尼科特靠着墙站在一个角落里，闭目养神。Gavoille坐在一张桌子上，眼神空洞，双腿悬空，像个要哭的孩子一样撅着嘴。医生正对着一本书点头。只有阿里亚斯一个人还很警觉，但脸色苍白得吓人，他面前的文件在灯火下，正和盖里低声讨论着什么。讨论，确实给你一个错误的印象。少校在说话。吉利点着头说，"是的，当然。吉利用主要的力量紧紧抓住那句'是的，当然'。他越来越急切地抓着少校的话语，就像一个半溺水的人抓着一个游泳者的脖子。如果我是阿利亚斯，我就会不假思索地说："盖利上尉，你将在黎明时分被枪毙，然后等待回答。

小组已经三个晚上没有睡觉了。它就像一座纸牌屋。

少校站起身来，走到拉科代尔身边，把他从梦中拉了出来，在梦中他也许在下棋时打败了我。

'拉科代尔! 你在黎明时分起飞。地面侦察机出动。

'很好，少校'。

'最好睡一会儿。

'是，少校'。

拉科代尔又坐了下来。少校走了出去，在他身后拉着吉利，好像他是一条线末端的死鱼。自从吉利上床睡觉以来，已经接近一个星期而不是三天了。就像 "阿利亚斯 "一样，他不仅执行飞行任务，而且还承担了集团的部分责任。人类的抵抗力有其极限。吉利似乎已经超越了他的极限。然而，他们就在那里，这个游泳者和他的负担，去参谋部接受幽灵般的命令。

怀疑的维萨恩，站着睡觉的维萨恩，像一个梦游者一样摇摇晃晃地走到我身边。-

'你睡着了？

'I . . .'

我一直躺在扶手椅上（因为我找到了一把扶手椅），确实在昏昏欲睡。但维萨恩的声音让我感到不安。他说的是什么？'看起来很糟糕，老伙计。. . 完全被挡住了。. . 看起来很糟糕。.'

'你睡觉吗？5

'I. . . . 不. . . . 你说什么看起来很糟糕？

'战争，'他说。

那是新闻，现在! 我又开始掉眼泪，含糊不清地喃喃自语：'什么战争？

'"你什么意思，"什么战争"！

少校推开门，叫道：'都准备好了！我们今晚出发！'。我们今晚就出发！'

在他身后站着的是吉利，他很清醒。他将把他的'是的，当然'推迟到明天晚上。他将再次以某种方式在自己身上找到一种力量的储备，以帮助他完成我们搬家时令人疲惫的琐事。

小组站了起来。小组说，'再搬一次？很好，先生'。还有什么可说的呢。

没有什么可说的。我们应该注意搬迁。拉科代尔将留下来，在黎明时分起飞。如果他回来了，他将在我们的新基地与我们见面。

明天也没有什么可说的。明天，在旁观者的眼中，我们将是战败者。被打败的人没有说话的权利。没有比种子更多的发言权了。