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The Loneliness of the Military HistorianConfess: it's my professionthat alarms you.This is why few people ask me to dinner,though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary.I wear dresses of sensible cutand unalarming shades of beige,I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's:no prophetess mane of mine,complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.If I roll my eyes and mutter,if I clutch at my heart and scream in horrorlike a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,I do it in private and nobody seesbut the bathroom mirror.In general I might agree with you:women should not contemplate war,should not weigh tactics impartially,or evade the word ,or view both sides and denounce nothing.Women should march for peace,or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,spit themselves on bayonetsto protect their babies,whose skulls will be split anyway,or,having been raped repeatedly,hang themselves with their own hair.There are the functions that inspire general comfort.That, and the knitting of socks for the troopsand a sort of moral cheerleading.Also: mourning the dead.Sons,lovers and so forth.All the killed children.Instead of this, I tellwhat I hope will pass as truth.A blunt thing, not lovely.The truth is seldom welcome,especially at dinner,though I am good at what I do.My trade is courage and atrocities.I look at them and do not condemn.I write things down the way they happened,as near as can be remembered.I don't ask , because it is mostly the same.Wars happen because the ones who start themthink they can win.In my dreams there is glamour.The Vikings leave their fieldseach year for a few months of killing and plunder,much as the boys go hunting.In real life they were farmers.The come back loaded with splendour.The Arabs ride against Crusaderswith scimitars that could seversilk in the air.A swift cut to the horse's neckand a hunk of armour crashes downlike a tower. Fire against metal.A poet might say: romance against banality.When awake, I know better.Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,or none that could be finally buried.Finish one off, and circumstancesand the radio create another.Believe me: whole armies have prayed ferventlyto God all night and meant it,and been slaughtered anyway.Brutality wins frequently,and large outcomes have turned on the inventionof a mechanical device, viz. radar.True, valour sometimes counts for something,as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right -though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,is decided by the winner.Sometimes men throw themselves on grenadesand burst like paper bags of gutsto save their comrades.I can admire that.But rats and cholera have won many wars.Those, and potatoes,or the absence of them.It's no use pinning all those medalsacross the chests of the dead.Impressive, but I know too much.Grand exploits merely depress me.In the interests of researchI have walked on many battlefieldsthat once were liquid with pulpedmen's bodies and spangled with explodedshells and splayed bone.All of them have been green againby the time I got there.Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.Sad marble angels brood like hensover the grassy nests where nothing hatches.{The angels could just as well be described as or , depending on camera angle.}The word figures a lot on gateways.Of course I pick a flower or twofrom each, and press it in the hotel Biblefor a souvenir.I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement.As I say, I deal in tactics.Also statistics:for every year of peace there have been four hundredyears of war. book-quotelonelinessmilitaryhouseHelen of Troy Does Counter DancingThe world is full of womenwho'd tell me I should be ashamed of myselfif they had the chance. Quit dancing.Get some self-respectand a day job.Right. And minimum wage,and varicose veins, just standingin one place for eight hoursbehind a glass counterbundled up to the neck, instead ofnaked as a meat sandwich.Selling gloves, or something.Instead of what I do sell.You have to have talentto peddle a thing so nebulousand without material form., they'd say. Yes, any wayyou cut it, but I've a choiceof how, and I'll take the money.I do give value.Like preachers, I sell vision,like perfume ads, desireor its facsimile. Like jokesor war, it's all in the timing. I sell men back their worst suspicions:that everything's for sale,and piecemeal. They gaze at me and seea chain-saw murder just before it happens,when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nippleare still connected.Such hatred leaps in them,my beery worshipers! That, or a blearyhopeless love. Seeing the rows of headsand upturned eyes, imploringbut ready to snap at my ankles,I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urgeto step on ants. I keep the beat,and dance for them becausethey can't. The music smells like foxes,crisp as heated metalsearing the nostrilsor humid as August, hazy and languorousas a looted city the day after,when all the rape's been donealready, and the killing,and the survivors wander aroundlooking for garbageto eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.Speaking of which, it's the smilingtires me out the most.This, and the pretensethat I can't hear them.And I can't, because I'm after alla foreigner to them.The speech here is all warty gutturals,obvious as a slam of ham,but I come from the province of the godswhere meaning are lilting and oblique.I don't let on to everyone,but lean close, and I'll whisper:My mothers was raped by a holy swan.You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.That's what we tell all the husbands.There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.Not that anyone herebut you would understand.The rest of them would like to watch meand feel nothing. Reduce me to componentsas in a clock factory or abattoir.Crush out the mystery.Wall me up alivein my own body.They'd like to see through me,but nothing is more opaquethan absolute transparency.Look - my feet don't hit the marble!Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,I hover six inches in the airin my blazing swan-egg of light.You think I'm not a goddess?Try me.This is a torch song.Touch me and you'll burn. book-quotehousemorningof
