Passage at arms

ALLAN SEAGER

Never in his life had he seen blood drawn in combat, a knife-wound, or a bullet hole in flesh (although he had seen, a few days before, the welts on Sholom Meyer's back, blue and clotted with blood, and Meyer on his stomach in bed, crying all day and all night with his wife beside the bed bathing the welts).

Yet he was an historian, and for the last fifty years his chief concern had been the violence of wars, their roots and their effects. He had read, by lamp light, the tally of hundreds of battles, while his spine tingled at the columns of black type which told of these brave men, the soldiery, and he had often got up from his desk and walked back and forth across his room, puffing on his meerschaum with excitement; or in his vacations, pointing with his umbrella across some little meadow, he would explain that there on the brow of the hill, two hundred years ago, lay Frederick's guards, and how they had swept down the hill across the meadow to the very place they were now standing.

So it was not surprising that once in his life he should make one trial of himself with arms, even though he was past seventy, and since an order from Berlin had come, he had no longer an official interest in history. Kicked out of the university, in fact.

Shortly after he had been expelled, it had become necessary to go to the shops at night, because it was dangerous to show one's self in the daytime in a place that was placarded. At night, also, they went to see their friends, walking softly through alleys and in the shadow under the eaves of buildings or under trees. In a room with the blinds lightly drawn, the women folk would cry, sitting by themselves in a corner, and the men would speak of the best ways to get into Switzerland. He himself said little, but he spent the days at his desk, fingering over his books, and sometimes working at intervals until he remembered that there was no need to work any more.

One night, when they heard the shouting in the street (there had been many Jews beaten lately) and his daughter had called backward from the window, "They are coming here," he ran to the closet and got the axe. I hey could hear the sound of heavy bootsoles on the stair.

It was an ice axe, that he had used climbing in the Engadine when he was a student. It was not very heavy, but it was the only weapon in the flat. He stood behind the locked door, with the axe over his shoulder, and his two hands gripping the haft, ready to split the head of the first Brownshirt who broke through the panels. Behind him, in the darkness, lie could hear the rapid breathing of his wife and daughter.

The noise on the stairway stopped. There was a knock. The doorknob was turned, and someone leaned against the door with a slight, dry, splitting sound. A voice said, Nicht zu House," and there was some laughter and one said they would return later in the evening. Then there was the sound of the bootsoles descending and presently the voices rising from the street.

The professor did not relax. For five minutes he stood alert, trembling, with the axe poised to strike. I hen his daughter turned on the lights, and the professor turned round in triumph, "I would have split their beads. If they had broken through —one swing—and a broken skull."

His wife, glad to hide her fear with anger, looked at him in contempt, "You, an old fool, with a toy axe."

His daughter, who had seen the Brownshirts from the window, said, "They were all students. Some of them yours. They had rubber clubs like the ones who beat Sholom Meyer."

"Students with rubber clubs, pfui. This axe is steel. Blood there would have been, if they had tried, hlood—not welts like Sholom Meyer's."

It was plain that the excitement and the danger had gone to the old man's head. He marched up and down the room, brandishing the axe, and talking in a lyric confusion of Horatius ready at the bridgehead, and Leonidas, the Spartan captain at Thermopylae

"Defenders of their homes, and faiths. Brave men. Heroes. Our race needs men like them."

His wife, exhausted by the strain of weeks, and exasperated at her husband, began to weep, rocking back and forth in her chair, sobbing hopelessly. " I hey are coming back tonight. I hey will beat us and there is nowhere to go."

"Hush, mama. I will protect you. They shall not harm you. I shall attack them first, said the professor, filled with valor by his own resolution. Still pacing to the end of the room and back, and stopping to pat his wife's head, he spoke of famous strategists and tacticians, as if he had an army at his back.

"Clausewitz has said that to defend one's self, one must always attack—always attack—"

He stopped abruptly, and thought a moment, one hand, like Napoleon's, in his breast.

"I have it! I shall attack them. I know where the students drink. I shall go there with my axe. I shall lay waste the Bierstube, and they will forget to return here and tomorrow we will all go to Switzerland. What do you think of that, mama?

His wife and daughter looked at him as if he were mad, standing there grinning, his face bright with sweat, and the axe still on his shoulder.

He got his hat and coat from the closet and began to put them on, talking and muttering of courage and heroism.

When they realized that he really meant to go and attack the Bierstube where the students were, his wife and daughter tried to restrain him. "Now, papli, you are ill; you must not excite yourself; I will get you some schnapps; there, there."

"Get away. War is not for women," he shouted angrily, and then, wheedlingly, "Don't you see, mama. It is for you, for us all. I hey will not come here if I attack them first."

He was about to go, when he turned, and kissed his wife and daughter each a rough soldier's kiss, and ran out with his axe.

The two women turned to each other in despair and began to weep.

It was cold in the street, and it occurred to the professor that it might be better if he took the small blade of the axe in his hand, and used the haft as a walking stick. It would arouse less suspicion. Also he would avoid the bright circles of light on the pavement from the street lamps. He kept close in the shadows of the buildings.

The aircooled him and, while he was still determined to "attack", he walked a little slower. At last he stopped, and, with terrible clarity, he remembered the talc of ravaged Ghettos in the past, the doors beat down, the men on horseback, and the torches in the night, and the time when his grandfather had seen his sister's body lie three days in the street before she was taken up.

"I am an old fool," he said. "They will

kill me; they will kill Mama; they will take my books. It has always been so."

The sound of his own voice roused him. For a moment, he was no longer a comic figure, a one-man army of tacticians and strategists, hut the avenger of his race, old, bearded, and dignified, running his thumb along the axe's dull blade.

Why did he stand there, then, loitering, and letting these old memories—that he knew by heart—delay him? It was cowardly to wait, when he had his axe and was already half-way to the Bierstube. He hurried on, under the linden trees, and the welter of military wise-saws, and glimpses of old wars rushed back into his head, and by the time he turned into the street of the beergarden. lie was Thor with his hammer, or Vercingetorix.

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The place was brightly lit, and he could hear voices and see shadows moving on the sidewalk. Without a pause, he flung the axe over his shoulder for the first blow and opened the door.

Young men, not in uniform, sat singing at wooden tables. When the door opened, a few turned to look.

The professor ran in, and swung his axe furiously at the first head. But, before it struck, a youth rose half from bis seat and caught the haft easily, snatched the axe out of the professor's hands, and broke the axe-handle over his knee. It was old, and broke easily.

A shout of laughter went up. The old man stood there helpless, blinking in the light smoke, his face covered with sweat and bis hat awry. A life of quiet study had left his face unready for the expressions of nobility. In his rage he looked exactly like a professor who cannot find his umbrella—petulant and fretful.

"Herr Professor," they shouted, "sit down. Have a beer."

They dragged him struggling to a bench, winking at one another, and thrust a stein of beer into his hand.

"Drink, Herr Professor."

With a peevish gesture, he tried to throw the stein at their heads, but as he drew it back, it caught on the edge of the table, broke, and cut his hand.

"Come, come, hochwohlgeborener, you abuse our hospitality. Drink," they urged, laughing, and one of them tried to pour the beer down his throat. He shook his head pursing his lips like a child, and the beer spattered down over his coat.

It would have tasted good, though, he thought, and he was tired.

"He teaches war, don't you, Herr Professor? His whole life be has taught war, without ever having been a soldier," they explained.

"Ja. The great campaigns, as you well know, Fritz," said the professor, nodding to a tall blond youth with fresh saber scars on his cheek.

"Tell us about the great campaigns," they said, leaning over the table and nudging one another.

"Well, gentlemen," he began, but seeing a fresh cool stein of beer, he took it automatically, drank deeply, and fluffed his moustaches, "gentlemen, there are many but, of all these, perhaps, the most intelligent was—"

In an hour, they had made the professor very drunk, and he was sitting on the end of the table, calling them "my beloved students," and saying, "you will remember how Clausewitz says always to attack, always to attack." and a little blood, the evening's only blood, ran from his cut hand.