Dream Report
Note: Some language and themes may not be suitable for younger readers.
I.
"We don't have to continue, Sir. You know that, right?”
The interviewer paused to see if the officer across from him would say anything in response. The officer did not; the interviewer continued.
“After all, General Paulus, you were the one who called us. You were the one who wanted to make a statement for the official record. There was – there is – no official investigation of these matters. And I doubt there ever will be. The incident you told us you wished to discuss involves only a low-level Native Pacification Operation. And the NPO you reference occurred almost thirty-five years ago."
Paulus exhaled loudly, his cheeks puffing out, his lips puckering. He stopped in mid-breath and shook his head in frustration at himself. The blowfish sigh was something Paulus did under stress or when depressed. It was a quirk he'd picked up from his father.
General Paulus shook his head to refocus himself. Paulus was indeed depressed and under great stress, and so he needed to keep rock-solid focus on his purpose, and Paulus’ purpose had nothing to do with traits he shared with his long-dead father. It had everything to do with the local man he’d seen at the parade just two days ago.
For over thirty years Paulus had carried a deeply-rooted pain from the experience he was about to report, but seeing the native at the parade had brought it all to the surface. Seeing the native had caused a pain so quick and sharp Paulus was compelled to give his report immediately. So he acted and requested a meeting with an investigator.
Paulus knew giving the report would damage his reputation – and possibly kill it – but that didn’t matter. If he did not make this report Paulus was quite convinced he would lose his mind, and his military reputation was currently much more stable and less important than his mind. The choice was an easy one.
But fuck. How could he – a soldier of rank and prestige who had given orders longer than his interviewer had been alive…how could he be so torn apart by memories and dreams and a man he’d seen only for a moment a couple of days ago?
Paulus breathed again, and he took great pains to make the breath silent and even. There was no puffing of the cheeks. Yet still the stress won out.
Unable to escape through his lips, the tension squeezed out his leg instead. Paulus tapped his right foot five times -- staccato pops on the marble floor. The fingers of Paulus' left hand did a flailing dance across the collection of medals covering his left breast. Paulus cursed his weak flesh and terrible fortune and smiled toward the interviewer, a sergeant by the name of Livy.
"No, no, Sargent Livy, I need to continue,” Paulus said. “I want to continue. Have to, really, I guess."
"Very well, sir," said Livy. "Please do so at your leisure."
Paulus took a drink of water and cleared his throat. "I was a private at the time, but I wouldn't remain one for long. My family had a proud history of military service. I was positioned to pass quickly up through the ranks of honor. Livy, you can plainly see that this is, in fact, what occurred." At the last phrase, Paulus touched his medals again and straightened his beret.
"The orders concerning the NPO came to us bit by bit, which wasn't all together unusual at the time. It was a strange time, Livy. But I suppose now is also strange. Maybe all times are strange in their own way.
“At any rate, we’d been assigned to do the bidding of the puppet King, and he was smart, smarmy, and quite likely insane.
"Before leaving the local’s Capitol, my detachment was told only that we were being dispatched to a nearby town to deal with a potential uprising. We were told that the King had officially designated the matter as, and I will quote the official, technical classification: “a disturbance of the peace and an impediment to the unity and sanctity of royal rule.”
"Livy, you are an informed man. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that the spirit of this phrase was complete bullshit. The King had as much unity and sanctity as a girl has balls between her legs, but by using the official designation -- Impediment to the Unity and Sanctity of Royal Rule – we knew the King was classifying the mission as a kill operation of some importance.
“In other words, the King considered it critical to his security. And since he was our puppet in this part of the world, the threat was important to us. It was a threat to our national security, if you will. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, Livy."
As Livy scrambled to scribble Paulus' last few phrases, he said, "No, no, General. Please continue. Please continue in any way you deem fitting. Imagine I don't know anything. Truth be told, that wouldn’t be too far off from the truth." Livy smiled as he said the last part, and he stretched out his words to give his hand a bit of a rest before having to jot notes again.
Paulus continued. "So, my detachment went to the shit-hole town assigned to us by the first phase of our orders. The town was about six miles from the capitol. We pitched our tents outside the town limits, and awaited the second phase of our orders. They’d be issued the next morning before we entered the town and carried out the operation.
As we ate our dinners, a rumor became a whispered wildfire spreading among us. As you know, Livy, there are always rumors in such situations, and they are rarely even close to correct. So when the fire got to me, I shrugged it off as silly and impossible.
“An hour later, as I stretched out on my bedroll in the dark, I tried to prepare myself for the possibility that the impossible was actually possible. I did so surgically and precisely and with impeccable reason.
“I told myself that threats to our way of life come in all shapes and sizes. I told myself that rebel leaders, like any of us, start out as children and are often reared from the crib for their evil work by their nut-fuck, bloodthirsty parents. I told myself that all these desert-dwelling freaks – the King, all of them – were sick, sub-human, and expendable. I kept telling myself all sorts of things until I finally fell asleep.
"And then, Livy, I had a dream. In most ways it was a true dream, almost a memory. I suppose it was more like a memory twisted, re-mixed, and re-presented to my troubled mind for that particular moment in time.
"In it I was twelve again. I was with my Momma, who for years had been a midwife. And I was her assistant again. I loved doing that work when I was a boy just becoming a man. It was a bloody but beautiful experience, Livy.
“When Momma's clients came to her for the big moment, Momma would send me out for the buckets of cool water she’d use to wash and refresh the laboring women under her care. Momma would also send me for the cords of rope her clients would bite on when the contraction pain washed over them. She’d send me on any number of little errands, all of them important because what was happening was so important.
"And when the news was good – which it was most of the time, thankfully – Momma would let me be her Mercury. She’d send me out running on my swift feet with tidings of great joy to share with the waiting father.
Without fail I’d find the dad pacing around our courtyard. He was impotent in this moment of birth because he’d been potent in the moment of conception nine months before. It felt so good to bring happiness to troubled souls, Livy. It felt good to tell the fathers, “Sir, you have a healthy child. Really, it did. Felt good.
"It was a wonderful time in my life. And there it was ten years later flowing over me fresh and clean and new – a gift of grace – as I lay on my mat curled up in sleep and cherishing my dreamed memories.
“In the story of the dream, I told a new father the good news I had to bear. Then I went back into the birthing room and found Momma. She was holding a newborn boy in her arms. He was red and fussy and waving his hands through the air. Momma had just sponged the afterbirth from his flesh and given him his first suck from his tired mother's tit.
"I reached out for the baby. Holding the child was a special gift Momma gave me as payment for my labors at her side. I got to hold the baby for a few moments and bask in the reflected glow of new life.
"But in the dream as I reached out for the child, Momma shook her head ‘no’ and – in a voice far lower than I had ever heard her use, a voice like tumbling boulders – she said, 'No, my son. You have seen life, and yet you choose death. Your hands have become weapons of the grave. They are not fit to handle life any longer.’
“And Momma was crying because of me. She’d always been a fashionable woman, and she often lined her eyes in charcoal because it was considered stylish, but in the dream her eye black had turned ugly. It was running down her cheeks in streaks because of her tears, the tears I had brought out of her for some reason I could not fathom.
"Remember, Livy. In the dream I was just twelve, and I was shocked, confused, not understanding things at all. But, I mean, fuck, sitting here right now I'm fifty-five, and I know it was a dream, but I'm still pretty much that same way. What was Momma talking about? Choosing death? I just wanted to hold the baby and smell his head and feel his warmth.
"But the dream was so real and in it Momma was not hearing my pleas. With her free hand, the hand not propping up the newborn's rump, Momma gestured toward my hands and shook her head at me once more. Before I looked down at my hands, I looked at her face. Her lips were curled in a sneer, and that alone was almost enough to make my heart stop.
"And then I finally looked down at my hands, and there were no hands to see. At the ends of my forearms there weren’t palms and fingers of flesh and bone. Instead there were two swords, their handles seamlessly grafted into my wrists, their steel blades rimmed in dried, flaking blood.
"Livy, I woke screaming and touching my fingers to my face one by one to confirm their rounded, soft tips. As I touched my face and whimpered, the edge of the earth began to glow pink with morning."
II.
"Twenty minutes later I stood with the rest of my detachment, all of us clothed in full battle dress. We stood in perfect, textbook formation. Smoke from the town we were about to invade rose in the distance, even though the cooking fires themselves were obscured by a bend in the road. We were at most a five minute march from our destination.
"We’d been standing at attention for ten minutes or so, and we were growing a little grumpy with it. Our discipline was good, as always, but there was the occasional fart or cough or the understated, blocked howl of a yawn.
"At last our commander, a well-balanced man named Rufus (he even dabbled in poetry and rhetoric during his down-time), emerged from his tent and stood before us. He gave us a long look and then commenced issuing the second and final phase of our orders.
"Rufus followed the protocol for giving operational orders precisely. But, when he gave them, you could also see the effects of his hobbies. He spoke his orders smoothly and with dramatic inflection, almost like an actor doing quality work on the stage.
"Gentlemen, we are entering this sector today to do our duty to our Brothers, to our Emperor, to our Motherland, to our Way of Life, and to the Pantheon itself."
"May it be so!" we all chanted in response and so played our foreordained role in the proceedings.
"Gentlemen, this operation is to be a full incursion with single execution. We will execute maximal visualization with minimal eradication."
Paulus again started tapping his foot on the interview room floor. His eyes had been fixed upon the table for the last few moments, but he lifted them with great effort and looked directly at his interviewer.
"Livy," Paulus said, "I know you know what those terms mean, but for the sake of a full report I would like to lodge an explanation of the terms in the permanent record."
"Of course, General. Certainly. The more detail the better."
Paulus returned his gaze to the table. "Those terms mean little or nothing to normal people, but to us they were very clear. Full incursion with single execution: we were going to enter every structure in the small town, and each soldier would be operating alone. The upside of this was that it meant no significant, armed resistance was expected. There would be nothing one of us couldn't handle alone.
"Maximal visualization: we were being ordered to do our work in such a way that there would be a lot of witnesses left behind to remember us, to tell the story of our violence, and so to pass the terror of our presence on to others.
“Minimal eradication: we were only supposed to kill the people specifically set aside for such treatment. Of course, there would be collateral damage, but this was to be avoided by all reasonable measures.
"My detachment once again played our part. We cried, 'May it be so!'
“Satisfied, Rufus pressed forward in sharing the orders with us. ‘Gentleman, the application of eradication is for males under two years of age.'
"There was a pause. Rufus awaited our words, the response of ‘May it be so!’ that should have answered him just a single beat after the end of his sentence. When we failed in our role, Rufus did not get angry with us. He was in many ways a kind man.
“Livy, it occurred to me that this was likely why Rufus had been slow to emerge from his tent and issue the orders. Rufus had probably been in his tent marshaling his poetry and rhetoric to find a way to answer this moment, the moment we paused after hearing what we were to do.
"Rufus ended up going with a straightforward but effective approach. 'Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I know this is not a run-of-the-mill operational objective. But need I tell you again the story of Captain Marcus?’
"Although the script required nothing of us here and, quite honestly, the ritual had already veered wildly off course, we responded with one voice: ‘No, Sir!’
"Marcus had been a captain who oversaw the daily care of another one of the pathetic, little, native towns sprinkled across the countryside. Marcus, unlike most of us, appreciated the locals and their culture. He loved to play with their kids, drink their tea, and chat with them in their language. The locals don’t love any of us, but Marcus was probably closer than any of us to that level of esteem.
"One day Marcus found himself in a park alone with only his assistant, a local woman, and her small son – a little guy of three or so. Marcus' assistant was behind a tree in another part of the park taking a piss. Marcus and the boy were sitting on the ground rolling a ball back and forth. Marcus was chatting up the mother while his eyes were on the child and his attention on the game they were sharing.
"While the boy’s mother spoke to Captain Marcus – and without breaking the conversation – she circled slowly behind him, pulled a knife fashioned expertly from stone, and stabbed Marcus repeatedly in the neck until he was dead. According to the official report filed by his assistant, death must have come very quickly.
"Before she was publicly executed, the rebel mother gave a private statement to her interrogator concerning her motivation for the murder. She said, 'I simply hated the uniform more than I liked the man.'
"No, Livy, Rufus did not need to repeat the story of Marcus, nor its lesson. We knew the lesson well. Even children could function as traps and rebels and enemies to the peace and salvation we had been tasked by heaven to bring into this distant part of the world.
"'May it be so,' we all chanted. We said it with little vigor, but with sufficient resolve. As soldiers we knew the score – sometimes it is only ugly work performed on ugly days that keeps the world in balance.
"Then the marching cadence commenced, one foot began to mindlessly follow the other, and we entered the town.
III.
“After just two hours’ work I’d entered eight private homes and a small shop selling tobacco and meat. In each place I’d done exactly what I’d been tasked to do. Then I entered my ninth structure of the morning.
“I kicked open the door and it swung to the right. The inside of the room was thick with shadows, but I could make things out well enough. I didn’t see anyone, at least not at first.
“It appeared to me that the room was some sort of workroom, some sort of shop. There was a large work table in the center of the space. The table was covered with wood-shavings. Random tools were scattered across its surface. My mental alarms went off. Tools can become weapons in situations like these.
“As I crossed the threshold, I sensed movement on the left. A young woman was crouching on her haunches underneath a windowsill. Her rust-colored hair caught the light in a way I would have found attractive in another context.
“The top of her peasant dress had been peeled down to her waist and her exposed right breast stared at me, its nipple a red, unblinking eye. The woman’s left breast was blocked from my view by the back of a child’s head. She had been suckling her baby as a way of keeping things quiet.
“Upon seeing me, the woman whimpered, and this caused the child to pop off from the nipple, turn his head, and look at me. Stuffed like a tick on the woman’s milk, the child released a soft belch. Then he stared at me with great intensity and remained silent.
“Though the child’s small body was covered, I sensed he was a boy, and he was clearly within the eradication parameters of my orders. I readied my sword and began my approach.
“Livy, as you probably already know from your expertise, this was a mistake on my part. No one in their right mind would leave a mother and a year-old-child unattended in this type of situation. I should have secured the room before I turned my full attention toward the child. It was simple stupidity on my part.
“As I moved slowly to my left and toward my objective, I cleared the doorway, and the door shut quickly behind me. A moment later I saw a huge, scarred hand take hold of my sword-arm and spin me with great power away from the mother and child.
“Livy, it is strange how sharp and fast the mind can work in moments like these. As I was rotated away from my objective, I calmly noted that this is just the kind of hand and power I would expect from someone who worked with wood and tools.
“I also noted that I would be fine. This was just the kind of poor tactic I would expect from a wood-worker unaccustomed to battle. He should have just brained me lethally with his first move. Now he had given up the surprise and guaranteed my victory.
“So the man spun me around, and I faced him. He had a hammer in his left hand and was preparing to use it in an attack. I did a quick calculation in my mind. I knew what this anonymous local did for a living. His career would be finished without an arm, but he could make a go at woodworking if he only lacked a portion of his leg.
“So I swung my sword low and made impact with the outside of his left calf. I felt the crack of bone giving way to metal, and the man was down even before the blood became visible. I knew from the force of my blow that he would likely lose the leg from the point of my strike down.
“I also knew that he was no longer a factor in whatever would come next. Within moments the man was on his ass, clutching his bleeding leg, quivering, and descending into shock. The blood had begun to pool around his buttocks.
“I threw the man a large rag I saw on the worktable so he could press the wound, and I turned back to the woman and child. Both of them sat still, clearly numbed by what they’d just seen. It was then, Livy, that everything broke loose within me. It was then that the present moment and my dream from the night before bled into one another, and I lost track of everything.
“How to describe it? It was like the present and the dream were suddenly superimposed atop one another, and I was left helpless, unable to unravel one from the other.
“To my eyes, the young mother was gone. Now the boy was cradled by my own Momma. Through the center part in her soot black hair Momma peered up at me with her black-rimmed eyes. The boy just continued to stare at me as he had before. While he stared at me, he pawed at the chocolate tip of my Momma’s exposed breast.
“And, Livy, I was twelve again. I was working with Momma, and she was working to bring babies safely into the world, and it was all well with my soul. I was twelve again, and never in my life had I even thought of hobbling and possibly killing a man in his own home.
“No. I was twelve again, and I had just given a local carpenter the good news about his baby boy newly born. I had just told the father that his son was suckling and safe and sound. I was twelve again, and I needed to hold the boy and draw warmth from his budding life.
“So I lost focus, Livy. I stopped my stalking a few feet from the child, and reached out to my mother and begged her to let me cradle the child for myself. But then I saw the same ‘no’ shake of the head I’d seen before in the dream.
And I heard the same words of denial, the words about me serving death and not being fit to hold life in my arms. And, like in my dream, I looked down and did not see flesh and fingers, but sword-steel and blood.
“But then I came back to my right mind, or so I thought. I decided that all this death was just a dream. I didn’t have swords for hands. I was twelve and a mid-wife’s son. The desperate need to hold the child boiled hotter, and so I lunged for him.
“And so, of course, Livy, I had a forgotten the sword I held in my right hand. With my lunge, I ran its point across the child’s cheek. It left a line in his flesh, deep but not deadly. I saw its dark mark sitting there straight as a carpenter’s plane across the boy’s pinkness. Then the blood started flowing and the boy started crying and the full weight of reality came back to me with a spasm of loathing and bile bubbling up from my gut.
“I fell to the floor and was unable to move. I saw the woman gather her senses, press her dress to the child’s face, and tie a tourniquet around her husband’s leg. She looked back at me. I told the woman that I was not fit for life. I told her they could go, and they did.
“Until this moment I have never said anything to anyone about this episode. I failed my duty, Livy. I failed.”
The interviewer put down his note-taking equipment, stretched his fingers, and popped his knuckles. Livy looked pale and chose his words carefully.
“General Paulus, I appreciate your desire for perfection in the quality of your service, but perhaps you are too harsh on yourself. This was a difficult assignment, and it was a very long time ago. Besides, you have proven yourself a model soldier countless times during the years between then and now. Why dwell on this single failed episode which is older than I am?”
Livy left his writing equipment on the table and folded his hands on his lap as he awaited General Paulus next statement.
Paulus took another drink of water, removed his beret, and placed it gently on the table. “True, Livy. I appreciate your confidence and your kind words. But recently I believe my failure back then has become an immediate issue of great importance right now – not just to me, but to our overall mission in this place.”
“Go on, sir,” said Livy, but Paulus noticed that his interviewer did not retrieve his writing tools in anticipation of taking down the next part of the report. This was strange, but Paulus’ desire to finish this business was so strong that he let it go without comment.
“Livy, I never became enamored with the locals like Commander Marcus did years ago. I never let my interest in them make me vulnerable and weak. Nonetheless, after this episode, I took more of an interest in them. Periodically, I’ve made the effort to try their foods, to learn a little of their foolish religious customs, to treat them less like inmates in a vast, open-air prison and more like human beings in a backward but proud city.
“So, two days ago, last Sunday, I was down at the city gates awaiting the start of one of their hero parades. I’ve gone to them before. I’ve grown to find them interesting and even a little moving – compelling, I suppose. I stand there along the side of the street and eat a light snack while I watch the locals shout their hoorays and cover the street with their leaves and jackets in celebration of their champion’s arrival.
“After a long wait, the local hero of the day finally reached my vantage point. Perched upon his animal he sauntered by my spot. Unlike most I’ve seen in his position before, he did not wave his hands and smile at the crowd. And his eyes did not roam among the well-wishers seeking out connection. Instead, as he passed by me, he just stared with great intensity at the road ahead of him. It was at this moment my stomach fell.
“The man was the little boy from the workshop, the objective I’d failed to secure. There was no doubt at all. On his right cheek was a white scar as level as this table sitting between us.
“Like a river breaking a section of countryside in two, the scar left a bold, bald line that partitioned his cheek’s thick beard into two halves. It was the mark left by my hand. It was him. This man is a hero on parade now because I failed then. He’s got to be trouble, Livy. Someone needs to act. I, at least, needed to make this report.”
It was at this point that Paulus’ decorum imploded. He began to weep. First he wept quietly, but then more loudly. He retrieved his beret from the table and covered his face with it.
“Livy, I feel trapped. Making this report feels awful and dirty. Not making the report feels disloyal to my nation and the flag I’ve served my whole life. And, after seeing that scar the other day, I feared that if I didn’t make this report I would have gone insane.”
Paulus placed his beret once more on the table and looked at his interviewer again.
“But the truth is that I’ve felt trapped and half-dead since the dream and the NPO and the hell I experienced in that workshop thirty years ago. Can I be free? What can be done, Livy? Is this report, this coming clean, enough? Will my mind finally find rest? Is it enough? Livy, why aren’t you writing this down anymore?”
The interviewer took a few deep breaths that filled the silence falling between them. Livy looked ill, but he placed his shaking hands on the tabletop to steady them and finally spoke, “Paulus, you are not the only one given dreams. I have recently been given them too. I have been given unsettling, demanding dreams for this very moment.
“And Paulus, through those dreams I am commanded not to record the final words of your report. And through those dreams I have been given these words for you. They are words I speak gladly to you because not long ago I received them myself:
“Paulus, in nomine Domini Jesu, Rex Caeli et Terrae, Regem Iudaeorum, liberati tibi. Ite in pace, mi frater.”
"We don't have to continue, Sir. You know that, right?”
The interviewer paused to see if the officer across from him would say anything in response. The officer did not; the interviewer continued.
“After all, General Paulus, you were the one who called us. You were the one who wanted to make a statement for the official record. There was – there is – no official investigation of these matters. And I doubt there ever will be. The incident you told us you wished to discuss involves only a low-level Native Pacification Operation. And the NPO you reference occurred almost thirty-five years ago."
Paulus exhaled loudly, his cheeks puffing out, his lips puckering. He stopped in mid-breath and shook his head in frustration at himself. The blowfish sigh was something Paulus did under stress or when depressed. It was a quirk he'd picked up from his father.
General Paulus shook his head to refocus himself. Paulus was indeed depressed and under great stress, and so he needed to keep rock-solid focus on his purpose, and Paulus’ purpose had nothing to do with traits he shared with his long-dead father. It had everything to do with the local man he’d seen at the parade just two days ago.
For over thirty years Paulus had carried a deeply-rooted pain from the experience he was about to report, but seeing the native at the parade had brought it all to the surface. Seeing the native had caused a pain so quick and sharp Paulus was compelled to give his report immediately. So he acted and requested a meeting with an investigator.
Paulus knew giving the report would damage his reputation – and possibly kill it – but that didn’t matter. If he did not make this report Paulus was quite convinced he would lose his mind, and his military reputation was currently much more stable and less important than his mind. The choice was an easy one.
But fuck. How could he – a soldier of rank and prestige who had given orders longer than his interviewer had been alive…how could he be so torn apart by memories and dreams and a man he’d seen only for a moment a couple of days ago?
Paulus breathed again, and he took great pains to make the breath silent and even. There was no puffing of the cheeks. Yet still the stress won out.
Unable to escape through his lips, the tension squeezed out his leg instead. Paulus tapped his right foot five times -- staccato pops on the marble floor. The fingers of Paulus' left hand did a flailing dance across the collection of medals covering his left breast. Paulus cursed his weak flesh and terrible fortune and smiled toward the interviewer, a sergeant by the name of Livy.
"No, no, Sargent Livy, I need to continue,” Paulus said. “I want to continue. Have to, really, I guess."
"Very well, sir," said Livy. "Please do so at your leisure."
Paulus took a drink of water and cleared his throat. "I was a private at the time, but I wouldn't remain one for long. My family had a proud history of military service. I was positioned to pass quickly up through the ranks of honor. Livy, you can plainly see that this is, in fact, what occurred." At the last phrase, Paulus touched his medals again and straightened his beret.
"The orders concerning the NPO came to us bit by bit, which wasn't all together unusual at the time. It was a strange time, Livy. But I suppose now is also strange. Maybe all times are strange in their own way.
“At any rate, we’d been assigned to do the bidding of the puppet King, and he was smart, smarmy, and quite likely insane.
"Before leaving the local’s Capitol, my detachment was told only that we were being dispatched to a nearby town to deal with a potential uprising. We were told that the King had officially designated the matter as, and I will quote the official, technical classification: “a disturbance of the peace and an impediment to the unity and sanctity of royal rule.”
"Livy, you are an informed man. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that the spirit of this phrase was complete bullshit. The King had as much unity and sanctity as a girl has balls between her legs, but by using the official designation -- Impediment to the Unity and Sanctity of Royal Rule – we knew the King was classifying the mission as a kill operation of some importance.
“In other words, the King considered it critical to his security. And since he was our puppet in this part of the world, the threat was important to us. It was a threat to our national security, if you will. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, Livy."
As Livy scrambled to scribble Paulus' last few phrases, he said, "No, no, General. Please continue. Please continue in any way you deem fitting. Imagine I don't know anything. Truth be told, that wouldn’t be too far off from the truth." Livy smiled as he said the last part, and he stretched out his words to give his hand a bit of a rest before having to jot notes again.
Paulus continued. "So, my detachment went to the shit-hole town assigned to us by the first phase of our orders. The town was about six miles from the capitol. We pitched our tents outside the town limits, and awaited the second phase of our orders. They’d be issued the next morning before we entered the town and carried out the operation.
As we ate our dinners, a rumor became a whispered wildfire spreading among us. As you know, Livy, there are always rumors in such situations, and they are rarely even close to correct. So when the fire got to me, I shrugged it off as silly and impossible.
“An hour later, as I stretched out on my bedroll in the dark, I tried to prepare myself for the possibility that the impossible was actually possible. I did so surgically and precisely and with impeccable reason.
“I told myself that threats to our way of life come in all shapes and sizes. I told myself that rebel leaders, like any of us, start out as children and are often reared from the crib for their evil work by their nut-fuck, bloodthirsty parents. I told myself that all these desert-dwelling freaks – the King, all of them – were sick, sub-human, and expendable. I kept telling myself all sorts of things until I finally fell asleep.
"And then, Livy, I had a dream. In most ways it was a true dream, almost a memory. I suppose it was more like a memory twisted, re-mixed, and re-presented to my troubled mind for that particular moment in time.
"In it I was twelve again. I was with my Momma, who for years had been a midwife. And I was her assistant again. I loved doing that work when I was a boy just becoming a man. It was a bloody but beautiful experience, Livy.
“When Momma's clients came to her for the big moment, Momma would send me out for the buckets of cool water she’d use to wash and refresh the laboring women under her care. Momma would also send me for the cords of rope her clients would bite on when the contraction pain washed over them. She’d send me on any number of little errands, all of them important because what was happening was so important.
"And when the news was good – which it was most of the time, thankfully – Momma would let me be her Mercury. She’d send me out running on my swift feet with tidings of great joy to share with the waiting father.
Without fail I’d find the dad pacing around our courtyard. He was impotent in this moment of birth because he’d been potent in the moment of conception nine months before. It felt so good to bring happiness to troubled souls, Livy. It felt good to tell the fathers, “Sir, you have a healthy child. Really, it did. Felt good.
"It was a wonderful time in my life. And there it was ten years later flowing over me fresh and clean and new – a gift of grace – as I lay on my mat curled up in sleep and cherishing my dreamed memories.
“In the story of the dream, I told a new father the good news I had to bear. Then I went back into the birthing room and found Momma. She was holding a newborn boy in her arms. He was red and fussy and waving his hands through the air. Momma had just sponged the afterbirth from his flesh and given him his first suck from his tired mother's tit.
"I reached out for the baby. Holding the child was a special gift Momma gave me as payment for my labors at her side. I got to hold the baby for a few moments and bask in the reflected glow of new life.
"But in the dream as I reached out for the child, Momma shook her head ‘no’ and – in a voice far lower than I had ever heard her use, a voice like tumbling boulders – she said, 'No, my son. You have seen life, and yet you choose death. Your hands have become weapons of the grave. They are not fit to handle life any longer.’
“And Momma was crying because of me. She’d always been a fashionable woman, and she often lined her eyes in charcoal because it was considered stylish, but in the dream her eye black had turned ugly. It was running down her cheeks in streaks because of her tears, the tears I had brought out of her for some reason I could not fathom.
"Remember, Livy. In the dream I was just twelve, and I was shocked, confused, not understanding things at all. But, I mean, fuck, sitting here right now I'm fifty-five, and I know it was a dream, but I'm still pretty much that same way. What was Momma talking about? Choosing death? I just wanted to hold the baby and smell his head and feel his warmth.
"But the dream was so real and in it Momma was not hearing my pleas. With her free hand, the hand not propping up the newborn's rump, Momma gestured toward my hands and shook her head at me once more. Before I looked down at my hands, I looked at her face. Her lips were curled in a sneer, and that alone was almost enough to make my heart stop.
"And then I finally looked down at my hands, and there were no hands to see. At the ends of my forearms there weren’t palms and fingers of flesh and bone. Instead there were two swords, their handles seamlessly grafted into my wrists, their steel blades rimmed in dried, flaking blood.
"Livy, I woke screaming and touching my fingers to my face one by one to confirm their rounded, soft tips. As I touched my face and whimpered, the edge of the earth began to glow pink with morning."
II.
"Twenty minutes later I stood with the rest of my detachment, all of us clothed in full battle dress. We stood in perfect, textbook formation. Smoke from the town we were about to invade rose in the distance, even though the cooking fires themselves were obscured by a bend in the road. We were at most a five minute march from our destination.
"We’d been standing at attention for ten minutes or so, and we were growing a little grumpy with it. Our discipline was good, as always, but there was the occasional fart or cough or the understated, blocked howl of a yawn.
"At last our commander, a well-balanced man named Rufus (he even dabbled in poetry and rhetoric during his down-time), emerged from his tent and stood before us. He gave us a long look and then commenced issuing the second and final phase of our orders.
"Rufus followed the protocol for giving operational orders precisely. But, when he gave them, you could also see the effects of his hobbies. He spoke his orders smoothly and with dramatic inflection, almost like an actor doing quality work on the stage.
"Gentlemen, we are entering this sector today to do our duty to our Brothers, to our Emperor, to our Motherland, to our Way of Life, and to the Pantheon itself."
"May it be so!" we all chanted in response and so played our foreordained role in the proceedings.
"Gentlemen, this operation is to be a full incursion with single execution. We will execute maximal visualization with minimal eradication."
Paulus again started tapping his foot on the interview room floor. His eyes had been fixed upon the table for the last few moments, but he lifted them with great effort and looked directly at his interviewer.
"Livy," Paulus said, "I know you know what those terms mean, but for the sake of a full report I would like to lodge an explanation of the terms in the permanent record."
"Of course, General. Certainly. The more detail the better."
Paulus returned his gaze to the table. "Those terms mean little or nothing to normal people, but to us they were very clear. Full incursion with single execution: we were going to enter every structure in the small town, and each soldier would be operating alone. The upside of this was that it meant no significant, armed resistance was expected. There would be nothing one of us couldn't handle alone.
"Maximal visualization: we were being ordered to do our work in such a way that there would be a lot of witnesses left behind to remember us, to tell the story of our violence, and so to pass the terror of our presence on to others.
“Minimal eradication: we were only supposed to kill the people specifically set aside for such treatment. Of course, there would be collateral damage, but this was to be avoided by all reasonable measures.
"My detachment once again played our part. We cried, 'May it be so!'
“Satisfied, Rufus pressed forward in sharing the orders with us. ‘Gentleman, the application of eradication is for males under two years of age.'
"There was a pause. Rufus awaited our words, the response of ‘May it be so!’ that should have answered him just a single beat after the end of his sentence. When we failed in our role, Rufus did not get angry with us. He was in many ways a kind man.
“Livy, it occurred to me that this was likely why Rufus had been slow to emerge from his tent and issue the orders. Rufus had probably been in his tent marshaling his poetry and rhetoric to find a way to answer this moment, the moment we paused after hearing what we were to do.
"Rufus ended up going with a straightforward but effective approach. 'Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I know this is not a run-of-the-mill operational objective. But need I tell you again the story of Captain Marcus?’
"Although the script required nothing of us here and, quite honestly, the ritual had already veered wildly off course, we responded with one voice: ‘No, Sir!’
"Marcus had been a captain who oversaw the daily care of another one of the pathetic, little, native towns sprinkled across the countryside. Marcus, unlike most of us, appreciated the locals and their culture. He loved to play with their kids, drink their tea, and chat with them in their language. The locals don’t love any of us, but Marcus was probably closer than any of us to that level of esteem.
"One day Marcus found himself in a park alone with only his assistant, a local woman, and her small son – a little guy of three or so. Marcus' assistant was behind a tree in another part of the park taking a piss. Marcus and the boy were sitting on the ground rolling a ball back and forth. Marcus was chatting up the mother while his eyes were on the child and his attention on the game they were sharing.
"While the boy’s mother spoke to Captain Marcus – and without breaking the conversation – she circled slowly behind him, pulled a knife fashioned expertly from stone, and stabbed Marcus repeatedly in the neck until he was dead. According to the official report filed by his assistant, death must have come very quickly.
"Before she was publicly executed, the rebel mother gave a private statement to her interrogator concerning her motivation for the murder. She said, 'I simply hated the uniform more than I liked the man.'
"No, Livy, Rufus did not need to repeat the story of Marcus, nor its lesson. We knew the lesson well. Even children could function as traps and rebels and enemies to the peace and salvation we had been tasked by heaven to bring into this distant part of the world.
"'May it be so,' we all chanted. We said it with little vigor, but with sufficient resolve. As soldiers we knew the score – sometimes it is only ugly work performed on ugly days that keeps the world in balance.
"Then the marching cadence commenced, one foot began to mindlessly follow the other, and we entered the town.
III.
“After just two hours’ work I’d entered eight private homes and a small shop selling tobacco and meat. In each place I’d done exactly what I’d been tasked to do. Then I entered my ninth structure of the morning.
“I kicked open the door and it swung to the right. The inside of the room was thick with shadows, but I could make things out well enough. I didn’t see anyone, at least not at first.
“It appeared to me that the room was some sort of workroom, some sort of shop. There was a large work table in the center of the space. The table was covered with wood-shavings. Random tools were scattered across its surface. My mental alarms went off. Tools can become weapons in situations like these.
“As I crossed the threshold, I sensed movement on the left. A young woman was crouching on her haunches underneath a windowsill. Her rust-colored hair caught the light in a way I would have found attractive in another context.
“The top of her peasant dress had been peeled down to her waist and her exposed right breast stared at me, its nipple a red, unblinking eye. The woman’s left breast was blocked from my view by the back of a child’s head. She had been suckling her baby as a way of keeping things quiet.
“Upon seeing me, the woman whimpered, and this caused the child to pop off from the nipple, turn his head, and look at me. Stuffed like a tick on the woman’s milk, the child released a soft belch. Then he stared at me with great intensity and remained silent.
“Though the child’s small body was covered, I sensed he was a boy, and he was clearly within the eradication parameters of my orders. I readied my sword and began my approach.
“Livy, as you probably already know from your expertise, this was a mistake on my part. No one in their right mind would leave a mother and a year-old-child unattended in this type of situation. I should have secured the room before I turned my full attention toward the child. It was simple stupidity on my part.
“As I moved slowly to my left and toward my objective, I cleared the doorway, and the door shut quickly behind me. A moment later I saw a huge, scarred hand take hold of my sword-arm and spin me with great power away from the mother and child.
“Livy, it is strange how sharp and fast the mind can work in moments like these. As I was rotated away from my objective, I calmly noted that this is just the kind of hand and power I would expect from someone who worked with wood and tools.
“I also noted that I would be fine. This was just the kind of poor tactic I would expect from a wood-worker unaccustomed to battle. He should have just brained me lethally with his first move. Now he had given up the surprise and guaranteed my victory.
“So the man spun me around, and I faced him. He had a hammer in his left hand and was preparing to use it in an attack. I did a quick calculation in my mind. I knew what this anonymous local did for a living. His career would be finished without an arm, but he could make a go at woodworking if he only lacked a portion of his leg.
“So I swung my sword low and made impact with the outside of his left calf. I felt the crack of bone giving way to metal, and the man was down even before the blood became visible. I knew from the force of my blow that he would likely lose the leg from the point of my strike down.
“I also knew that he was no longer a factor in whatever would come next. Within moments the man was on his ass, clutching his bleeding leg, quivering, and descending into shock. The blood had begun to pool around his buttocks.
“I threw the man a large rag I saw on the worktable so he could press the wound, and I turned back to the woman and child. Both of them sat still, clearly numbed by what they’d just seen. It was then, Livy, that everything broke loose within me. It was then that the present moment and my dream from the night before bled into one another, and I lost track of everything.
“How to describe it? It was like the present and the dream were suddenly superimposed atop one another, and I was left helpless, unable to unravel one from the other.
“To my eyes, the young mother was gone. Now the boy was cradled by my own Momma. Through the center part in her soot black hair Momma peered up at me with her black-rimmed eyes. The boy just continued to stare at me as he had before. While he stared at me, he pawed at the chocolate tip of my Momma’s exposed breast.
“And, Livy, I was twelve again. I was working with Momma, and she was working to bring babies safely into the world, and it was all well with my soul. I was twelve again, and never in my life had I even thought of hobbling and possibly killing a man in his own home.
“No. I was twelve again, and I had just given a local carpenter the good news about his baby boy newly born. I had just told the father that his son was suckling and safe and sound. I was twelve again, and I needed to hold the boy and draw warmth from his budding life.
“So I lost focus, Livy. I stopped my stalking a few feet from the child, and reached out to my mother and begged her to let me cradle the child for myself. But then I saw the same ‘no’ shake of the head I’d seen before in the dream.
And I heard the same words of denial, the words about me serving death and not being fit to hold life in my arms. And, like in my dream, I looked down and did not see flesh and fingers, but sword-steel and blood.
“But then I came back to my right mind, or so I thought. I decided that all this death was just a dream. I didn’t have swords for hands. I was twelve and a mid-wife’s son. The desperate need to hold the child boiled hotter, and so I lunged for him.
“And so, of course, Livy, I had a forgotten the sword I held in my right hand. With my lunge, I ran its point across the child’s cheek. It left a line in his flesh, deep but not deadly. I saw its dark mark sitting there straight as a carpenter’s plane across the boy’s pinkness. Then the blood started flowing and the boy started crying and the full weight of reality came back to me with a spasm of loathing and bile bubbling up from my gut.
“I fell to the floor and was unable to move. I saw the woman gather her senses, press her dress to the child’s face, and tie a tourniquet around her husband’s leg. She looked back at me. I told the woman that I was not fit for life. I told her they could go, and they did.
“Until this moment I have never said anything to anyone about this episode. I failed my duty, Livy. I failed.”
The interviewer put down his note-taking equipment, stretched his fingers, and popped his knuckles. Livy looked pale and chose his words carefully.
“General Paulus, I appreciate your desire for perfection in the quality of your service, but perhaps you are too harsh on yourself. This was a difficult assignment, and it was a very long time ago. Besides, you have proven yourself a model soldier countless times during the years between then and now. Why dwell on this single failed episode which is older than I am?”
Livy left his writing equipment on the table and folded his hands on his lap as he awaited General Paulus next statement.
Paulus took another drink of water, removed his beret, and placed it gently on the table. “True, Livy. I appreciate your confidence and your kind words. But recently I believe my failure back then has become an immediate issue of great importance right now – not just to me, but to our overall mission in this place.”
“Go on, sir,” said Livy, but Paulus noticed that his interviewer did not retrieve his writing tools in anticipation of taking down the next part of the report. This was strange, but Paulus’ desire to finish this business was so strong that he let it go without comment.
“Livy, I never became enamored with the locals like Commander Marcus did years ago. I never let my interest in them make me vulnerable and weak. Nonetheless, after this episode, I took more of an interest in them. Periodically, I’ve made the effort to try their foods, to learn a little of their foolish religious customs, to treat them less like inmates in a vast, open-air prison and more like human beings in a backward but proud city.
“So, two days ago, last Sunday, I was down at the city gates awaiting the start of one of their hero parades. I’ve gone to them before. I’ve grown to find them interesting and even a little moving – compelling, I suppose. I stand there along the side of the street and eat a light snack while I watch the locals shout their hoorays and cover the street with their leaves and jackets in celebration of their champion’s arrival.
“After a long wait, the local hero of the day finally reached my vantage point. Perched upon his animal he sauntered by my spot. Unlike most I’ve seen in his position before, he did not wave his hands and smile at the crowd. And his eyes did not roam among the well-wishers seeking out connection. Instead, as he passed by me, he just stared with great intensity at the road ahead of him. It was at this moment my stomach fell.
“The man was the little boy from the workshop, the objective I’d failed to secure. There was no doubt at all. On his right cheek was a white scar as level as this table sitting between us.
“Like a river breaking a section of countryside in two, the scar left a bold, bald line that partitioned his cheek’s thick beard into two halves. It was the mark left by my hand. It was him. This man is a hero on parade now because I failed then. He’s got to be trouble, Livy. Someone needs to act. I, at least, needed to make this report.”
It was at this point that Paulus’ decorum imploded. He began to weep. First he wept quietly, but then more loudly. He retrieved his beret from the table and covered his face with it.
“Livy, I feel trapped. Making this report feels awful and dirty. Not making the report feels disloyal to my nation and the flag I’ve served my whole life. And, after seeing that scar the other day, I feared that if I didn’t make this report I would have gone insane.”
Paulus placed his beret once more on the table and looked at his interviewer again.
“But the truth is that I’ve felt trapped and half-dead since the dream and the NPO and the hell I experienced in that workshop thirty years ago. Can I be free? What can be done, Livy? Is this report, this coming clean, enough? Will my mind finally find rest? Is it enough? Livy, why aren’t you writing this down anymore?”
The interviewer took a few deep breaths that filled the silence falling between them. Livy looked ill, but he placed his shaking hands on the tabletop to steady them and finally spoke, “Paulus, you are not the only one given dreams. I have recently been given them too. I have been given unsettling, demanding dreams for this very moment.
“And Paulus, through those dreams I am commanded not to record the final words of your report. And through those dreams I have been given these words for you. They are words I speak gladly to you because not long ago I received them myself:
“Paulus, in nomine Domini Jesu, Rex Caeli et Terrae, Regem Iudaeorum, liberati tibi. Ite in pace, mi frater.”