Can Such Things Be? By Ambrose Bierce
A RESUMED IDENTITY
I - THE REVIEW AS A FORM OF WELCOME
One summer night a man stood on a low hill overlooking a wide
expanse of forest and field. By the full moon hanging low in the
west he knew what he might not have known otherwise: that it was
near the hour of dawn. A light mist lay along the earth, partly
veiling the lower features of the landscape, but above it the
taller trees showed in well-defined masses against a clear sky.
Two or three farmhouses were visible through the haze, but in
none of them, naturally, was a light. Nowhere, indeed, was any
sign or suggestion of life except the barking of a distant dog,
which, repeated with mechanical iteration, served rather to
accentuate than dispel the loneliness of the scene.
The man looked curiously about him on all sides, as one who among
familiar surroundings is unable to determine his exact place and
part in the scheme of things. It is so, perhaps, that we shall
act when, risen from the dead, we await the call to
judgment.
A hundred yards away was a straight road, showing white in the
moonlight. Endeavoring to orient himself, as a surveyor or
navigator might say, the man moved his eyes slowly along its
visible length and at a distance of a quarter-mile to the south
of his station saw, dim and gray in the haze, a group of horsemen
riding to the north. Behind them were men afoot, marching in
column, with dimly gleaming rifles aslant above their shoulders.
They moved slowly and in silence. Another group of horsemen,
another regiment of infantry, another and another - all in
unceasing motion toward the man’s point of view, past it,
and beyond. A battery of artillery followed, the cannoneers
riding with folded arms on limber and caisson. And still the
interminable procession came out of the obscurity to south and
passed into the obscurity to north, with never a sound of voice,
nor hoof, nor wheel.
The man could not rightly understand: he thought himself deaf;
said so, and heard his own voice, although it had an unfamiliar
quality that almost alarmed him; it disappointed his ear’s
expectancy in the matter of timbre and resonance. But he
was not deaf, and that for the moment sufficed.
Then he remembered that there are natural phenomena to which some
one has given the name “acoustic shadows.” If you
stand in an acoustic shadow there is one direction from which you
will hear nothing. At the battle of Gaines’s Mill, one of
the fiercest conflicts of the Civil War, with a hundred guns in
play, spectators a mile and a half away on the opposite side of
the Chickahominy valley heard nothing of what they clearly saw.
The bombardment of Port Royal, heard and felt at St. Augustine,
a hundred and fifty miles to the south, was inaudible two miles
to the north in a still atmosphere. A few days before the
surrender at Appomattox a thunderous engagement between the
commands of Sheridan and Pickett was unknown to the latter
commander, a mile in the rear of his own line.
These instances were not known to the man of whom we write, but
less striking ones of the same character had not escaped his
observation. He was profoundly disquieted, but for another
reason than the uncanny silence of that moonlight march.
“Good Lord!” he said to himself - and again it was as
if another had spoken his thought - “if those people are
what I take them to be we have lost the battle and they are
moving on Nashville!”
Then came a thought of self - an apprehension - a strong sense of
personal peril, such as in another we call fear. He stepped
quickly into the shadow of a tree. And still the silent
battalions moved slowly forward in the haze.
The chill of a sudden breeze upon the back of his neck drew his
attention to the quarter whence it came, and turning to the east
he saw a faint gray light along the horizon - the first sign of
returning day. This increased his apprehension.
“I must get away from here,” he thought, “or I
shall be discovered and taken.”
He moved out of the shadow, walking rapidly toward the graying
east. From the safer seclusion of a clump of cedars he looked
back. The entire column had passed out of sight: the straight
white road lay bare and desolate in the moonlight!
Puzzled before, he was now inexpressibly astonished. So swift a
passing of so slow an army! - he could not comprehend it. Minute
after minute passed unnoted; he had lost his sense of time. He
sought with a terrible earnestness a solution of the mystery, but
sought in vain. When at last he roused himself from his
abstraction the sun’s rim was visible above the hills, but
in the new conditions he found no other light than that of day;
his understanding was involved as darkly in doubt as
before.
On every side lay cultivated fields showing no sign of war and
war’s ravages. From the chimneys of the farmhouses thin
ascensions of blue smoke signaled preparations for a day’s
peaceful toil. Having stilled its immemorial allocution to the
moon, the watch-dog was assisting a negro who, prefixing a team
of mules to the plow, was flatting and sharping contentedly at
his task. The hero of this tale stared stupidly at the pastoral
picture as if he had never seen such a thing in all his life;
then he put his hand to his head, passed it through his hair and,
withdrawing it, attentively considered the palm - a singular
thing to do. Apparently reassured by the act, he walked
confidently toward the road.
II - WHEN YOU HAVE LOST YOUR LIFE CONSULT A PHYSICIAN
Dr. Stilling Malson, of Murfreesboro, having visited a patient
six or seven miles away, on the Nashville road, had remained with
him all night. At daybreak he set out for home on horseback, as
was the custom of doctors of the time and region. He had passed
into the neighborhood of Stone’s River battlefield when a
man approached him from the roadside and saluted in the military
fashion, with a movement of the right hand to the hat-brim. But
the hat was not a military hat, the man was not in uniform and
had not a martial bearing. The doctor nodded civilly, half
thinking that the stranger’s uncommon greeting was perhaps
in deference to the historic surroundings. As the stranger
evidently desired speech with him he courteously reined in his
horse and waited.
“Sir,” said the stranger, “although a civilian,
you are perhaps an enemy.”
“I am a physician,” was the non-committal
reply.
“Thank you,” said the other. “I am a
lieutenant, of the staff of General Hazen.” He paused a
moment and looked sharply at the person whom he was addressing,
then added, “Of the Federal army.”
The physician merely nodded.
“Kindly tell me,” continued the other, “what
has happened here. Where are the armies? Which has won the
battle?”
The physician regarded his questioner curiously with half-shut
eyes. After a professional scrutiny, prolonged to the limit of
politeness, “Pardon me,” he said; “one asking
information should be willing to impart it. Are you
wounded?” he added, smiling.
“Not seriously - it seems.”
The man removed the unmilitary hat, put his hand to his head,
passed it through his hair and, withdrawing it, attentively
considered the palm.
“I was struck by a bullet and have been unconscious. It
must have been a light, glancing blow: I find no blood and feel
no pain. I will not trouble you for treatment, but will you
kindly direct me to my command - to any part of the Federal army
- if you know?”
Again the doctor did not immediately reply: he was recalling much
that is recorded in the books of his profession - something about
lost identity and the effect of familiar scenes in restoring it.
At length he looked the man in the face, smiled, and said:
“Lieutenant, you are not wearing the uniform of your rank
and service.”
At this the man glanced down at his civilian attire, lifted his
eyes, and said with hesitation:
“That is true. I - I don’t quite
understand.”
Still regarding him sharply but not unsympathetically the man of
science bluntly inquired:
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three - if that has anything to do with
it.”
“You don’t look it; I should hardly have guessed you
to be just that.”
The man was growing impatient. “We need not discuss
that,” he said; “I want to know about the army. Not
two hours ago I saw a column of troops moving northward on this
road. You must have met them. Be good enough to tell me the
color of their clothing, which I was unable to make out, and
I’ll trouble you no more.”
“You are quite sure that you saw them?”
“Sure? My God, sir, I could have counted
them!”
“Why, really,” said the physician, with an amusing
consciousness of his own resemblance to the loquacious barber of
the Arabian Nights, “this is very interesting. I met no
troops.”
The man looked at him coldly, as if he had himself observed the
likeness to the barber. “It is plain,” he said,
“that you do not care to assist me. Sir, you may go to the
devil!”
He turned and strode away, very much at random, across the dewy
fields, his half-penitent tormentor quietly watching him from his
point of vantage in the saddle till he disappeared beyond an
array of trees.
III - THE DANGER OF LOOKING INTO A POOL OF WATER
After leaving the road the man slackened his pace, and now went
forward, rather deviously, with a distinct feeling of fatigue.
He could not account for this, though truly the interminable
loquacity of that country doctor offered itself in explanation.
Seating himself upon a rock, he laid one hand upon his knee, back
upward, and casually looked at it. It was lean and withered. He
lifted both hands to his face. It was seamed and furrowed; he
could trace the lines with the tips of his fingers. How strange!
- a mere bullet-stroke and a brief unconsciousness should not
make one a physical wreck.
“I must have been a long time in hospital,” he said
aloud. “Why, what a fool I am! The battle was in
December, and it is now summer!” He laughed. “No
wonder that fellow thought me an escaped lunatic. He was wrong:
I am only an escaped patient.”
At a little distance a small plot of ground enclosed by a stone
wall caught his attention. With no very definite intent he rose
and went to it. In the center was a square, solid monument of
hewn stone. It was brown with age, weather-worn at the angles,
spotted with moss and lichen. Between the massive blocks were
strips of grass the leverage of whose roots had pushed them
apart. In answer to the challenge of this ambitious structure
Time had laid his destroying hand upon it, and it would soon be
“one with Nineveh and Tyre.” In an inscription on
one side his eye caught a familiar name. Shaking with
excitement, he craned his body across the wall and
read: