The Witching Snakes pt. 29

Agatha's friends die in the war, starting with Sarah. Agatha starts walking in No Man's Land as friends sign up for the war together. Agatha takes lovers including Zionists, Russians and Americans.

Read Part 28

Sarah was the first casualty. She volunteered to be a nurse. Agatha tried to visit her in that field hospital, but she was always overwhelmed. She was clamping and holding down arteries. The stench of feces and blood soaked into her clothing.

Her station was shelled in 1915. In her last months, she smoked and drank Scotch on the job and in the morning. She needed to get out of the blood. Soldiers frequently begged for amputation. Faces broken by bullets refused to die.

Agatha thought that she loved Sarah the most, maybe because Sarah hated her. Agatha accepted Sarah. She had even told Sarah about her son. Sometimes when she was feeling morose, she would say that he died. She never admitted that he had died of a heart attack on his 85th birthday or that she had grandchildren, great grandchildren and descendants.

As the war continued, the artists dispersed. Fritz joined up and Johann was drafted. Ivan swore that he would never get swept up in capitalist wars but he enjoyed the drums and the armies and the music. He wanted to hear the pipes. It was so easy to speak cruel at the beginning; simple to think of death in academic terms. Is kindness ever easy? Ivan's apartment stunk of sweat. He spoke grandiloquent speeches until one day, he just signed up.

The night before he left, Agatha held him and told him that he was the last of her gilded lovers. The earth would fall without Ivan. She cried and made Ivan confess to loving misery. Even in his confession, he sounded arrogant. He had no illusions. Had he been born with a heart condition he would have not been half as certain as he was on that gray mattress.

"Do you love me?" she asked. He didn't answer until she asked again.

"I don't know. I want to love you. Is that the same? Are we just cold? I have felt passion before, maybe when you were laughing at Johann's jokes or that night Natasha and I stuck our tongues in you. I don't know if I can love without jealousy. I like you a great deal..."