City of Ghosts by Bali Rai

Author:Bali Rai [Bali Rai]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 2010-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

11 March 1915

THE CRUCIFIX STOOD alone. It was simply made, of two thick poles, the wood weathered, darkened by time. The statue of Christ crucified was untouched by the chaos, dirt and blood of the battle. All around, buildings had been turned to rubble and ash, their timber-framed roofs blackened and charred. Some still smouldered – and in one or two places fires burned. Bissen Singh wandered through what had once been someone’s courtyard, his rifle poised and ready, even though the enemy was long gone. After the previous day’s fighting, the German front line had retreated from the village, to an area of flat ground called the Bois de Biez. Bissen had no idea what this meant. He had merely heard an officer calling it this. Not that it mattered. Not now.

The battle had been a disaster. Reports were reaching Bissen’s subedar of successes along other parts of the front line, but Bissen had scoffed at these so-called victories. The indiscriminate slaughter that he had taken part in should have achieved three objectives. The enemy were to have been driven back a great distance; the village was to have been retaken; and finally the high ground of Aubers Ridge should have fallen into Allied hands. The enemy had fallen back, but only by just over a mile. The village had been taken, but it remained a village no longer. The homes of its people had been shelled and fired on and flattened. Its orchards and trees and flowers had been destroyed. The town square resembled a quarry: great piles of rubble and stone lay where artists had once sat with easels, and where couples had walked arm in arm past pavement cafés. And Aubers Ridge remained in enemy hands.

Bissen edged through a small door that hung by one rusting hinge. He’d entered a small storeroom. It was pitch black inside and smelled of rotting onions, damp and mildew. A scratching noise came from his left. Then a hissing, snarling sound, followed by a click and more hissing. He stood there, breathing quietly, the throbbing in his shoulder a constant, nagging companion. Realizing that it was only a cat, he left the storeroom and made his way back across the courtyard. Three of its walls were gone. The fourth stood alone, a solitary hanging basket attached to it. No flowers.

The ringing in Bissen’s ears had faded since the barrage of the previous morning. All night, as he sat hunched against a damp wall, listening to Atar Khan talking of the Punjab and attempting to sleep, his ears had buzzed. Nothing gave him respite from the insistent drone. Not closing his eyes or listening to Atar’s words, or the morphine he had been given to ease the pain in his shoulder. The wound had been cleaned and treated by the field doctor; a short, slight, fair-haired man who wore wire-rimmed glasses and had the breath of an alcoholic. Bissen had thanked him in his best English, a courtesy that seemed to shock the doctor.

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