The Gradual Read Free

years.

3
    By the time I was fourteen all my plans of becoming a professional musician had to be put aside. The war continued with no apparent conclusion in sight. Militarily it had become a stalemate. An arranged cease-fire brought an end to the bombing of towns, but our lives were still disrupted. The cease-fire was only temporary at first, but it was better than nothing and as the months went by it did seem to hold. Temporariness turned slowly into a feeling of permanence. The political and economic disputes remained – we heard about border infringements, mineral rights disputes, arguments about access to water sources, there was an apparently intractable row about reparations, and of course beneath it all was a clash of political ideology.
    The main consequence was that a treaty was drawn up, but not a treaty for peace. The war itself, the actual fighting, was to be continued abroad. The great frozen continent at the southern pole of the world, which was called Sudmaieure, was uninhabited, deemed to be valueless terrain and was appropriated as a pitch for a standing war. Young people were drafted into the military in increasing numbers, shipped south, and made to stand on the pitch and fight for their masters.
    No one therefore made the mistake of thinking that because our homes were no longer under attack the war had ended and we were at peace. Everyone realized that it would take years, perhaps decades, to return to that. However, the fabric of civilian lives might at least now be repaired. So many cities had been damaged, houses lost, factories and infrastructure destroyed – rebuilding work began. Ordinary people tried to resume their former lives.
    The letter Jacj dreaded most arrived one day. The recruiting of young men and women had redoubled. He threw the letter on our breakfast table for us to read. He was given a date by which he must report for a medical examination. Assuming his health was acceptable he would be drafted immediately. He would be sent south to fight for the honour of our country, and had been pre-selected for something called the 289th Battalion, an active service unit.
    Jacj and I often played duets together. Sometimes I accompanied him on the piano, but most often we simply stood side by side with our violins, quietly playing. One day, when we had finished, Jacj said, ‘Sandro, we need to talk.’
    He led me to his bedroom, which was on the top storey of the house, and closed the door securely behind us. His pet cat, Djahann, a forest cat, mostly white and long-haired, was asleep on his bed. He sat beside her, pressed his hand lightly on her neck then teased her gently under the chin as she raised her head, large green eyes blinking.
    ‘I’ve got to join up,’ he said. ‘There’s no way out of it.’
    ‘When will it be?’
    ‘Next week.’
    ‘So soon?’
    ‘You saw the letter that came,’ he said. ‘That was the third one. I hid the others as soon as they arrived. I destroyed them.’
    He told me then some of what he had been doing to try to avoid the draft. The anti-war group he belonged to had various strategies for avoidance, or at best for delay. The group mostly consisted of teenagers like himself, all dreading the call-up. He had tried all their ideas: begging for medical notes, claiming educational commitments, obtaining a letter from his tutor. The response from the army authorities had been implacable. Jacj said that going into hiding was the most desperate method, tried by many young conscripts he knew.
    ‘All were discovered,’ he said. ‘These people know where to look. It’s useless trying to escape them.’
    ‘But Dad said—’
    ‘I know. But in the end I realized that trying to hide only made things worse. It’s the coward’s way.’
    I knew my father had arranged for a close friend from his days at university to take Jacj in. He and his wife had a farm in a remote village high in the Glaundian mountains – Dad said the escouades, the recruit squads sent