Faces in a Dusty Picture by Gerald Kersh

Author:Gerald Kersh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1943-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Seven

Sergeant Doughty bellows like a mad bull, wordless and defiant: – “Maaaaahn!” It means Come on. He hears the voice of Ben Cream raised in exhortation: –

“Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? The Lord’s always with you, brother. You got to fight the good fight with all your might, sir; with all thy might. Bear up, mister! The Lord took and delivered Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego from a fiery furnace. Trust God – He knows what He’s doing of; you can’t tell Him what to go and do. Now – – ”

“You bloody madman,” cried Lackland, in a husky and agonised shout, “Shut your jaw!”

But Ben Cream goes gn: – “If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in Hell, behold Thou art there…Yes, mister, if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me. You mark my words, friend. Yes…the darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shinest as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee…”

“My feet are bleeding,” says Lackland, half-crying.

“So were His,” says Cream.

The dust is putting out the sun, which burns blood-red now, steadily darkening. A hot fog has come over the Desert. There was a time when the world sped cleanly in a clearly-defined orbit about a bright pure light. Now, it gropes drunkenly around a tumid and feverish inflammation. Seventy seconds after Doughty has shouted, somebody asks: “Don’t we rest now?” Time will not burn: it is dying…a second smoulders like a thick dry string. Half a minute later the same man will say: – “It’s the middle of the night by now – don’t we ever stop?”

A haggard truck-driver who used to be chauffeur to a musical-comedy star sees the sun and says: – “Red…Stop. Red means Stop.”

“You watch out,” says the soldier next to him.

“Nothing to watch.”

The road seems to be heaving sluggishly under a thin smoke, like boiling porridge. The soldier says: “Where are we supposed to be going?”

“Should I know?” asks the driver, wearily, yawning. The loose skin of his face quivers as the truck jolts on, dragging a squifrel-tail of grey dust towards the burnt-up western horizon.

Now, everything that moves appears to flaunt a plume, or trail a fluffy boa, or wear a majestic furry train. The dust is getting softer and rising higher, while the dreary bowl of the desert sings like a rapped wine-glass with the noise of the flies. As an undertone to this wearisome thin droning which lingers perpetually on the verge of fading away, you begin to hear a strange, surging whisper – as if you were holding sea-shells against your ears – Hhhoooaahh, Hhhoooaahh…

“For God’s sake, not a sandstorm?” says Pryde, thickly.

An apricot-faced little subaltern named Ivy, with a trace of white-blond moustache which is not unlike a milk-mark on a baby’s lip, says: – “If it is, I rather think we’re going to have a d-deuce of a business.

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