I have always loved the enchantment of a village dreaming aloud in the fair night by the voice of a single watch dog. And now what I ask is to see again my village tidied for sleep, its doors prudently shut upon its barns, its cattle, its customs. To see its peasants, home from the fields, their evening meal eaten and their table cleared, their children put to bed and their lamp blown out, dissolved into the silent night. And nothing more—unless perhaps, under the stiff white sheets of the countryside, the slow pulsation of their breathing, like the subsidence of a swell after a storm at sea.

God suspends the use of things and speech for the period of the nocturnal balance sheet. By the play of that irresistible slumber which loosens the fingers until morning, men will appear in my vision with open hands. And then perhaps I shall win a glimpse of that which has no name. I shall walk like the blind whose palms lead them towards the flame in the hearth. The blind cannot describe the flame, yet they have found it. Thus perhaps shall I see what it is in that dark village that we must die to protect—that which is unseen, yet like an ember beneath the ashes, lives on.

Nothing comes of a sortie you have got out of. If you are to understand a thing as simple as a village, you must first—.

“Captain!”

“Yes?”

“Six German fighters on the port bow.”

The words rang in my ears like a thunderclap.

You must first.... You must first.... Ah! I do want very much to be paid off in time. I do want to have the right to love. I do want to win a glimpse of the being for whom I die.

VI

“Gunner!”

“Sir?”

“D’you hear the lieutenant? Six German fighters. Six, on the port bow.”

“I heard the lieutenant, sir.”

“Dutertre! Have they seen us?”

“They have, Captain. Banking towards us. Fifteen hundred feet below us.”

“Hear that, gunner? Fifteen hundred feet below us. Dutertre! How near are they?”

“Say ten seconds.”

“Hear that, gunner? On our tail in a few seconds.”

There they are. I see them. Tiny. A swarm of poisonous wasps.

“Gunner! They’re crossing broadside. You’ll see them in a second. There!”

“Don’t see them yet, sir.... Yes, I do!”

I no longer see them myself.

“They after us?”

“After us, sir.”

“Rising fast?”

“Can’t say, sir. Don’t think so.... No, sir.”

Dutertre spoke. “What do you say, Captain?”

“What do you expect me to say?”

Nobody said anything. There was nothing to say. We were in God’s hands. If I banked, I should narrow the space between us.