Something moves against the dawn light to the east; a man running, crouched, from one low stone wall towards another. Light flickers from the open doorway of the mill. The sound of the gunfire comes at the same moment the man drops to the ground. He tries to rise, then as the gunfire cracks again he shakes and jerks and lies still.
Looking back, I see a dark figure moving round the side of the windmill from the other side, a rifle held one handed, the other arm held up, hand clenched and full, by his shoulder. I squint, trying to make the fellow out in the still deficient light. I don’t think he is one of the lieutenant’s men. There is silence for a few moments as the man moves towards to the door. No sign of movement comes from inside the mill. The soldier edges closer, just a stride’s length away.
A single shot cracks out, and the man jerks away from the side of the mill, dropping the rifle and staggering forwards as he clutches at his side. Where his side had been, against the mill’s sloped wooden planks, there is a small pale gash in the black slat. He half runs, half falls past the mill’s open door, arm moving, throwing something. More firing; he hops, arms flying out and for an instant he has the comical look of somebody trying to imitate the mill’s shape, his spread limbs like the building’s four spread sails. Then he drops, collapsing like a bag of broken bones, folding and collapsing to a sitting position on the ground outside, before toppling over and disappearing into the grass.
The explosion in the mill is a single sudden flash of light and a ragged jolt of sound. Grey white smoke drifts out of the mill after a moment or two. I lie there for some time, waiting, but there is no more movement, no more sound.
In a little while, birdsong begins. I listen to it.
Still nobody moving. When I shiver, I decide to get up. I stand shakily, using the bushes for support, then I wipe my face with the back of a shaking hand. I remember I have a handkerchief somewhere, and finally find it. I walk across the sandy soil towards the mill, crouching and feeling foolish, but still afraid that there is somebody else here, more patient than I, lying watching and waiting with a gun. I stop by a stunted tree, gazing into the darkness of the mill’s doorway. Something creaks above me. I duck and almost fall, but it is only the branches, moving in a faint breeze.
Mr Cuts lies sprawled on a barbed wire fence just below the mill, half kneeling, arms on the far side of the wire, face laid against the barbs, the ground below him saturated with dark blood. His gun dangles from one hand, swaying in the breeze.
A little way up the slope is the soldier who threw the grenade into the mill, lying in long grass. His uniform is unfamiliar though I wouldn’t be able to recognise him anyway because his face is a red ruin of bloody flesh.
I walk up to the mill and step inside. The interior reeks of smoke and a musty odour that must be ancient flour. My eyes gradually adjust to the deeper gloom. There is still dust or flour in the air, circling and settling as it backs away from the breeze from the doorway. Out of the ceiling, a single great wooden shaft descends, linked by an axle to a pair of huge and ancient millstones balanced coupled on their stony track like dancers frozen in the figure. Funnels and channels lead from hoppers to the stones, the outworks of a doubled heart. An octagonal wooden dais surrounds the great stump of rock. Not much else remains, no sacks or sign of grain or recent flour; I think the mill last worked long ago.
I stumble over a couple of tape twinned gun magazines. There is a man lying on his back by the side of the door, chest opened and bloody. Beneath the bloody, floury mask is a face I recognise as one of the lieutenant’s men but cannot put a name to. By his side lies a radio, hissing. The grenade seems to have gone off a little way past him, beneath where a spiral of wooden stairs lead up into a greater darkness, their wooden steps ruptured and splintered.
By the rear of the mill’s torus of stone, the lieutenant sits, her back to the wooden wall. Her legs are spread out in front of her and her head rests on her chest. Her head jerks up as I approach, and her hand comes up too, holding a pistol. I flinch, but the gun flies from her hand and clatters on to the floorboards to one side. She mutters something, then her head flops back. There is blood beneath her, its surface coated with a thin patina of flour. A grey white dusting on her hair, skin and uniform makes her look like a ghost.
I squat by her, putting my hand to her chin and raising it. The eyes move behind their lids and her mouth works, but that is all. Blood from her nose has left twin rivulets over her lips and down her chin. I let her head fall back. The lieutenant’s long gun lies nearby her hand. The exposed magazine is empty. I try various little levers and catches and eventually find the one which frees the other clip; it too has been used up. I cross to where the lieutenant’s pistol lies. It feels light, though when I open it I can see there are at least two bullets in the magazine.
I look at the dead man at the door, at the two dead men visible outside, Mr Cuts hanging on the wire like an image from an earlier war, the grenade thrower keeled over in the swaying grass with no discernible face. I hold the lieutenant’s pistol in my burned, shaking hand.
What to do? What to do? Become furious, my muse murmurs, and I squat by the lieutenant again and put the muzzle of the pistol experimentally against her temple. I recall the first day we met her, when she blew out the brains of the young man with the stomach wound, after kissing him first. I think of her a little while ago, kneeling naked on the bed, firing at me, nearly killing me. My hand is shaking so much I have to steady it with my other hand. The muzzle of the gun vibrates against the skin at the side of her head, beneath her brown curls. A small vein pulses weakly under the olive surface. I swallow. My finger feels weak upon the trigger, incapable of exerting any pressure. For all I know she’s dying anyway; she seems concussed or in some way losing consciousness and all this blood must indicate a serious wound somewhere. Killing her might be a release. I steady my grip and sight along the barrel, as though this makes a difference.
Then there is a creaking, cracking noise from above me, and then a disorienting sense of movement, and a deep, surrounding rumbling noise. I stare wildly around, wondering what’s happening, and see the world outside the door moving, and cannot believe my eyes, and only then realise that the mill itself is rotating. The force of the breeze must have just become sufficient to make the airy wooden circle turn to face into the flow of air. Grinding and resounding, with many a mournfulsounding moan and painful creak, the mill turns, and as though its sails and gears and stones are lode eventually it settles its face towards the bitter north. I watch the view through the door change, sliding away from the road and the forest on its far side, taking away the sight of the dead men and gradually slowing and steadying and grumbling to a stop, to display the way west, back down the road it seems I’m fated never to travel to the end of but always to return down, the road back to the castle.
I look again at the lieutenant. The breeze tumbles in through the open door and disturbs her flour greyed curls. I put down the gun. I cannot do this. Walking to the doorway, feeling faint and dizzy again, I look out into the dawning day and take some deep breaths. The ragged, half empty arms of the sails are lifted as though in vain entreaty to the wind, feathered and powerless.
And yet, some part of me still says: Exert, assert your self … but does so too well, its sentence pronounced too clearly. I do not know, I cannot impersonate such vivacious anger. It is known to me empirically, but no more, and that knowledge pins me.
I look back at her. What would she do? And yet, should I even care what she would do? She sits there, nearer death than she can know, and in my power. I am in control, I have prevailed, even if only by luck. What would I do? What should I do? Be like myself, act as normal? And yet what is ever normal, and what value or utility has normality in these abnormal times? Less than nothing, it seems to me. Therefore act abnormally, act differently, be irregular.