A warped tune rings out, its once joyful song marred with rasping, ringing, and scratches. It echoes off crumbling walls and over warped floorboards. Around the stairs and into the parlor room it sings, reaching out to mud and shell-holes through a great gash in the opposite wall. The room lays desolate, its carpet and furnishings coated in a thick layer of ash and dust. On the wall next to the piano, a portrait sits crooked. It shows an old man in military uniform. His eyes peering from below bushy grey eyebrows, a proud, stoic expression marking his face. His uniform is bright and decorated, the shining of his many medals dimmed under the dingy blanket of dust. Below the portrait is a dresser, with a shadow box resting on top of a dusty, burned sheet of deep blue.
The house rests in a clearing between the blackened remnants of two forests. A road winds through the woods up to a small cul-de-sac in front of the house. The road that once guided motor carriages and a periodic horse bears new marks, hundreds of gashes and tears cut by such quantities of ammunition the street appears closer to an old wood chopping block. On the left side of the house, a small garden overflows with flora of every type. A small network of rusting pipes snakes through the rectangle of soil wrapped and overtaken by vines and roots. In some places the rust and vines have prevailed, small cracks in the pipe spraying a sputtering mist of water over the thriving vegetables. The tune is louder here, flowing proudly from a small window concealed by vines and hardy tomato plants.
In the kitchen the tune is the loudest, pouring out of a small gramophone in the corner. Thick beams of morning light escape out of fissures in the wall, particles of cinder swimming through the light like minnows. The light struggles through the dust, illuminating a small dining table pressed into a corner. Near the garden window is the kitchen sink, piled high with small, immaculately clean plates. A stove, countertop, and set of drawers sit in the center of the room. Made of carefully painted cherry wood with golden images of flowers wrapping around its every surface, the small kitchenette stands in defiance of the room’s conservative décor.
In the corner next to the gramophone, a figure sits slumped forward in a small chair. A tattered suit hangs over its rigid frame like rags on a corpse. Through the moth-eaten holes in its once smart uniform, wires and copper shine in the early morning light.
The tune rings out again, violently shaking its way through the brass horn. The figure shifts, shuddering and clicking as it brings itself upright, a placid, joyful expression painted on its boyish porcelain face. On the tune’s third repetition, a dim, flickering light emerges behind the automaton’s eyes. There it rests, patiently listening as the tune finishes its second encore. Suddenly the song ends, the sounds that once filled the air replaced with silence, save for the clock-like ticking from the mechanical servant boy.
Whirs, clicks, and shudders accompany the servant’s every motion. He slowly begins to stand, his limbs quivering like those of an anciently old man. He walks with a limp, his right knee surrendering all movement to a bright green coat of corrosion. He totters uneasily over to the gaudy cabinet near his chair. Carefully swinging the door, which is now hanging on a single hinge, he retrieves a small cloth. In three perfect arcs, he wipes the ash from the countertop. Slowly bending down again, he retrieves a carton of eggs, a bread box, and two empty milk bottles. Ignorant of the lack of ingredients, the servant continues. Turning on the broken stove, he mimes the breaking of an egg into a pan. In this way, he continues, carefully preparing a small pantomime breakfast. As the lightly seasoned plate is delicately placed on the table, the servant hobbles towards the hall.
A head peeks through a doorway beneath the stairs. It ratchets around, peering up over the staircase. The face is bathed in the warm morning light, peering blankly past the stairs and out towards the sky.
The second floor of the building was only a memory now. Bombardment burning away the laughter, tears, and sleepless nights. The marriage bed carefully brought from a far foreign land is spread liberally throughout the backyard. Only cinders and the wretched skeleton of the roof lay intact, its beams reaching to the sky like the bones of some once great beast.
The servant limps into the light and speaks joyfully up the stairs.
“Time to get up, Ma’am! Breakfast is ready!”
The words rattle out of his frame with a metallic ring, projecting up the stairs and out into the air. He waits for a response, standing frozen; as if his very animation was predicated on her acknowledgment.
“Sleeping in late again, Ma’am? Very well…”
Dejected, the servant attempts to turn back through the door. Pivoting on his left leg he turns, his right leg locked straight out, it strikes the wall with a thud. The left leg steps forward, bending under the increasing weight as the automaton leans away from the wall. Suddenly, his leg slips, giving way as he falls like a felled tree. His shoulder crashes to the floor, metallic ringing and tinkling following the initial impact. Legs kick at the air uselessly, walking in place in the void. An eternity seems to pass as the servant marches through the air before his leg catches the door frame again, rolling him onto his stomach. Something clicks in him as his knee strikes the floor and he freezes. Delicately, he presses the ground with his hands and raises to a crouch. Shuddering, he stands fully again. Without a moment’s hesitation, he limps to his post behind the counter, shivering with every movement like an engine starved of oil. Again, the servant stands, waiting.
Somewhere in the house, a clock tolls. On the seventh ring, the servant comments. His voice is deeper and quieter, unable to reach the distances it so recently could.
“You must be very busy indeed, Ma’am.”
He hobbles over to the dining table to retrieve the empty plate. Marching over to a small trash can, he goes through the motions of scraping food off the empty plate before placing it on the unstable pile in the sink and turning toward the door.
The warped boards in the hallway rise and fall like waves on the ocean, speckled with swimming buoys of ash and cinder. A newspaper lies on the surface, its message emblazoned in black ink that reads WAR REACHES TAURED!
The servant shuffles across the hallway, past the front door, and towards the parlor room, faltering as his steps navigate the pits and rises of the floorboards. In the parlor room down the hall, a small desk rests next to the door. It has the same colorful, gold-lined design as the kitchenette. Entering the parlor room, the automaton takes a feather duster from the table.
Slowly the quivering automaton limps across the room, towards the portrait of the old man. As he staggers along, something outside shifts. The once beautiful field outside the house had been replaced with mud and craters; as if the home had suddenly transported itself to the surface of the moon. Something moves in these craters, a momentary glimpse of black shapes darting from one hole to the next.
The servant continues his duties, straightening the portrait and beginning to dust it off. In a few strokes, the dust is gone, the brilliant blue of the old man’s uniform shining proudly again. His medals begin to shine with their original luster. The servant then tilts his head down to the shadow box on the desk.
He comments, “Oh dear, what could have happened?”
The shadow box’s glass pane is broken, crushed by a large roof tile falling from the crumbling roof. The servant bends down, his brass fingers making a muffled ring as his gloves touch the rough surface. He attempts to stand, a loud ticking accompanying his slow rise. Suddenly the ticking turns to a loud metallic grinding, the servant’s back collapsing forward with the weight of the tile. It falls from his hands, bursting perfectly into fine red powder on the floor. The servant pauses for a moment, staring at the pile of dust as if remembering something. The old man always loved to shoot clay pigeons, perhaps he would have enjoyed the brief, unintentional recreation. In the box, medals, photos, and a pair of brass dog tags lay haphazardly in a pile of ash and glittering glass. The servant removes one of the images, a portrait of a woman and a young, joyful boy. The servant lifts it up, dusting off the front before placing it on the blue cloth.
He picks up another photo. It features the same woman, older and sitting in a chair. Next to her stands a young man in uniform, holding his cap beneath his arm. The man stares out into the dimly flickering eyes of the servant. The man’s proud, stoic expression matching that of the old man’s portrait. The woman appears to be similarly proud, but the deep, aged creases around her eyes betray a look of solemn fear, like one gazing into a storm on the horizon.
Each of these items is placed delicately on the blue sheet until the two portraits flank a line of medals. Below the ensemble lies a pair of brass dog tags, the name “RITTER, ADRIAN” engraved along the center.
“There we go, no need for that box anyway,” the servant comments as he collects the dust of the roof tile into the old box, and hobbles to place the box near an old pile of firewood.
Suddenly, a shrill, screaming sound erupts from down the hall, its high pitch seeming to pierce through even the building’s strongest walls. The servant pauses, standing taller for a moment and staring down the hallway. The servant watches, frozen in place for a few moments.
“Tea-time already?” He comments.
The servant limps down the hallway again, past the door and towards the kitchen. He shouts up the stairs as he passes, his voice struggling to overcome the screaming teapot.
“Tea-time, Ma’am! Is Miss Baumbach visiting today?”
He enters the kitchen, hobbling across the room to a heavily rusted teapot on a hotplate. He takes it off the plate, finally silencing the shrill call. He turns to his cabinet, retrieves a small dish, and pauses for a moment.
“I will make tea for two in case Ma’am has company.”
He retrieves two small teacups, delicately painted with images of gardens and small houses marred by cracks and chips. He also retrieves a box of teabags, and a dish of sugar, placing them delicately on the dish on the cabinet. He takes the rusty teapot and places it as well, shakily bending down to collect the uneasy ensemble. He lifts it, the ratcheting clicks of his back slowly ticking up again. He hobbles down the hall once again, the teacups shaking and rolling around the quivering silver dish. A rhythmic crunching sound squeaks through the gash in the far wall, accompanied by muffled muttering.
The servant enters the parlor room, delicately placing the dish on a small table near the gash, its legs groaning and shaking uneasily under the new weight. He takes up the teapot, removing the plug and turning to one of the small cups. The teapot shakes violently as it begins to tilt and thick, brown, metallic-smelling water falls in ribbons into one of the cups. The crunching is louder now, a sudden run of wet footfalls for a few moments and then silence.
The servant turns curiously, he places the teapot back on the table and shuffles toward the house’s broken wall, gazing around like a dog anticipating the arrival of its owner. Another wave of whispers escapes from the craters as the servant approaches, bending down slightly to gaze out at the alien landscape.
A figure erupts from the hole, now visibly human. It runs from one crater to another, leather boots crunching against the dirt and rocks as the figure dives into its new settlement. Whispers are exchanged between the hovels and two more figures appear.
The servant begins to turn his head, ratcheting and clicking as he calls out.
“Ma’am you have company arriving for tea. I’ll welcome them in.”
A third figure bursts from the mouth of a crater as the servant calls out. The shape compresses suddenly, freezing in place like a startled hare.
The servant turns, joyfully hobbling towards the door to welcome the new arrivals. The sounds of boots moving toward the front of the building grow louder.
A shower of sparks erupts from the servant’s stomach. The sparkling of spalling metal bursting out like a firework show, immediately accompanied by a great blast erupting through the gash in the wall. The thunder expands out, rolling across the landscape and far beyond the fields.
Stubbornly the servant continues, stumbling and shuddering towards the door, the ring of metal on metal sounding out as his hand falls on the doorknob.
The door takes on the servant’s shuddering, as if in fear for itself as it opens. It shakily reveals the front cul-de-sac, a few rounded shadows bobbing behind a low stone wall. Another set of flashes, and another peal of noise erupts from them, another shower of sparks and metal. In a rough, faltering voice the servant begins to repeat, “Ma’am, you have company arriving. I’ll welcome them in.”
The servant tips like a felled tree, falling backward into the hallway and crashing against the warped floor. Metallic tinkling and ringing like spilling a box of nails shake through the tattered black coat. The servant repeats, again and again.
“Ma’am, you have company arriving.”
The figures stand, revealing a set of young, clean-shaven faces underneath pan-shaped metal helmets. They all look to one man barely older than the others, still aiming a handgun at the old house’s doorway. He roughly barks an order to them.
“Move in and watch the windows, there could be more Hun hiding out on the second floor!”
They step over the wall, rifles pointed to every angle of the building. Their once smart khaki uniforms now two-toned brown from crawling in the mud. As they enter the building, their
mud-coated boots pound and spread into every room as they coldly scan for more threats. The servant weakly repeats. “Have company arriving.”
The young captain steps over the shape of the servant, he nervously takes a cigarette out of a front pocket, fumbling with a lighter as if his life depended on its functioning. His lighter is a small brass contraption not unlike a pocket watch, a cameo of a young woman barely visible through the mud wiped against its side.
“Company arriving.”
The captain looks down at the servant, his eyes wide with shock for a moment. The man leans down. He inspects the servant’s cracked porcelain face, still painted with a rosy-cheeked smile. The man’s face darkens into a scowl as he mutters shakily to himself and takes a deep breath. He calls out to the hall, his voice confident and rough again.
“Take whatever you want and raze the place. Unless you want to leave the Hun a good hiding spot.”
The servant’s calls degrade, now barely recognizable as anything but groaning.
He glares at the crumpled body again. After a moment he shouts, “Will one of you shut up this damn thing?”
A soldier jogs into the room. After a moment of silence, another crack, this time followed not by sparks or metal ringing, but a sound like a teacup dropped on the floor. The sound of a happy porcelain visage shattering.
A soldier appears from the parlor room, calling to the captain and tossing a small brass chain to him. The captain catches it, opening his hand and letting the small medallions hang into his palm.
“Adrian, eh? Shame we didn’t get him, but Daisy back home won’t know that will she?”
He tosses the dog tags back to the soldier and laughs. As he begins to step out of the building he takes the cigarette out of his mouth and flicks it into the shadow box and dry firewood in the corner of the parlor room. The cigarette’s embers become a small flame, slowly climbing up the logs, wallpaper, and spiderwebs until they begin to lick the dry remains of the ceiling.
A few soldiers run out of the building as the house releases a deep groan like the labored breath of a dying man. The sounds of gramophone tunes and the happy servant’s calls are gone, now replaced only by the crackling of fire, and the distant laughter of men.
Comentários