The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part I
A Grand War
A clangorous note from First Corporal-Major Tomasso’s bugle faded into the smoky dusk, albeit not without some warbling. We did not begrudge Tomasso the warbling, though he was a shit bugler. Some warbling was, after all, to be expected in times like these. For a bugler and his bugle to among them be without warble would, in fact, be quite surprising indeed, given the age and dented condition of bugles in San Sebastian army. Not to mention that Tomasso’s bugle in particular was of an obviously uncertain alloy, melted down and recast as it had been — several times, in fact — since the outbreak of hostilities some years before in anticipation of the need to use the metal contained in the bugle for canteens or bullets or helmets, only to have the liquefied bugle be granted a reprieve upon the arrival of a barge full of pig iron from Milan or a train full of bullets from Venice.
Sometimes the reprieve was total, and the bugle was born again and returned to Tomasso with its integrity intact. Other times, however, it was quite obvious that the pardon had been only partial, with Tomasso’s bugle returned to him a little lighter but of the same dimensions. This, we all knew, could only mean that his bugle had been adulterated with tin or sand or bits of glass or compressed potato skins. So you couldn’t expect there to not be some warble from Tomasso’s bugle, even if he weren’t a shit bugler, though he was that in spades.
Tomasso had only just recently gotten his bugle back from the bugle works in Trieste. Or was it Vaduz? Whichever it was, we all knew of it because First Corporal-Major Tomasso would never stop trumpeting the astounding resilience and all-around excellence of his bugle. Like an engaged man who can’t shut up about the beauty of his moley, mustachioed fiancée, we first thought Tomasso was blind, then we thought he was an idiot, then we just felt a sad, guilty contempt for him. For that reason none of us pointed out the literal tinniness of Tomasso’s warbly bugle, let alone the bits of clay we were sure we could see in it.
We did, however, often call Tomasso’s bugle a trumpet because no matter how many times you did it he earnestly believed that you thought the bugle was a trumpet, and was astounded and, frankly, a little annoyed that you could believe that such a thing as obviously a bugle as his bugle was a trumpet. He would then slowly explain to you, like you were a kinde, how a bugle and a trumpet were different.
Whenever this happened we — the men of the 3rd Baronial Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment of the army of San Sebastian — would act as if we were having trouble grasping the finer points of brass-instrument taxonomy, which would further fluster Tomasso. How could we not understand something so simple? he would demand. The instrument is right there in front of our eyes!Tomasso would protest. And yet, we would maintain, the myriad differences between a bugle and a trumpet remained elusive to us. In the end, Tomasso concluded we were all callow rubes, content with our cards, cigars, and bergamot liqueurs, woefully ignorant of the higher cultures of music generally and the bugle in particular.
Each time alike we called his bugle a trumpet and he was as stupefied as the first. And each time alike he would explain again with much exasperated gesticulation just how a bugle was clearly not a trumpet. Sometimes we would pretend to have finally seen the light. For weeks at a time after such a ploy Tomasso would rest assured knowing that he had finally educated us on the bugality of his brassish instrument and just how clearly it was not a trumpet. Perhaps one of us might one day like to learn to play the bugle and he would teach us, we imagined he dreamed. Then, after enough time had gone by, one of us would ask Tomasso about his trumpet and he would kick the shit pail.
Once in a while, we’d hide his bugle and then ask him where is trumpet was. That would keep us in stitches for weeks. Sure, we sometimes felt guilty for harassing that dumb utter, Tomasso. But not as much as we enjoyed laughing at our bugle/trumpet ludibrium, and, to be fair, him just as much, behind his back. We’d laugh to his face too when we’d hide the horn.
He thought we were just laughing because we’d hidden his bugle, like little bambini. So he didn’t feel too bad looking for it all over camp because at least, he believed, he knew the difference between a bugle and a trumpet. The fact that Tomasso thought we were the dolts only made us laugh harder behind his back. Corporal-Major Adjutant Ziller once laughed about it so hard we thought he would pass out. We found him later in the infirmary with a hernia. He nearly died of sepsis and was sent home.
After some time a small doubt began to creep in, just on rare occasions: Some of us would begin to think that Tomasso was smarter than we gave him credit for, and maybe smarter than us. In these instances some among us would posit a theory that Tomasso was in on the joke, and was playing the fool to escalate the joke ad absurdum for his amusement. These conspiracists would say that he was going back to his bunk at the buglers’ barracks and laughing himself silly over it all. Maybe in his telling of it to his bugler brethren he was the joker and we were the gang of idiotic bumpkins who actually believed someone, Tomasso, could be so stupid as to believe that a grown man of sound mind, one of our company, might not grasp the difference between a bugle and a trumpet after one explanation.
After a moment’s pause we would usually start laughing again, harder than before. Of course not! we’d say between gasps, That is ridiculous! Tomasso is a mouth-breathing cowshit of the highest order!We would then forget the whole thing until the time was right for the next bugle/trumpet imbroglio. But I would wager that each time this dark notion was let out of its box a few more of us, in the deep reaches of the backs of our heads, began to wonder whether it was, in fact, Tomasso who was one step ahead.
There was only one way to test this diabolical hypothesis. That would be to press our feigned ignorance of the finer distinctions between a bugle and a trumpet to new heights, heights so ridiculous that we would know — beyond any lingering doubt — that Tomasso could not truly believe that we were unable to grasp the Platonic ideal of trumpets vis-à-vis bugles. But that was the Rubicon. For if we went too far, and the Edison’s Bulb went off in Tomasso’s brain cage, then the game was up — he would know we were, in fact, able to distinguish between trumpets and bugles and our whole carrying on was just an elaborate joke at his expense. Once he knew that, he would surely just laugh and ignore us whenever we asked about his trumpet. Or he would stab one of us in our sleep, and probably me.
Sure we could still hide the bugle, but it was the falsely incomprehensible distinct identities of bugles and trumpets that was the fun of it all, really; hiding the bugle was child’s play. So to determine for certain whether Tomasso had turned the tables on us would run the risk of depriving us all of the most fun we had had or ever would have in those trenches during that war, The Grand War, tinged though that joy was by the tiniest pang of guilt from our merciless mocking of Tomasso’s inherited intellectual limits. So we could not bring ourselves to do it. We did play some games with the breaking point, walking up to the ledge of obviousness in our acted stupidity, but never so close that we would fall, like grabbing your little brother and pretending to throw him off a jagged Dolomite peak onto a glacier a thousand feet below, making sure to stop close enough to scare him, but not so close as to scare yourself.
And before you judge us or feel too badly for Tomasso, I might ask you, what is worse: A gang of men relentlessly making fun of one person’s guilelessness and stupidity for their own amusement, or robbing the greatest source of mirth that they will ever know from a great many soldiers facing death in a maze of muddy diseased trenches in the southeastern Alps during the bloodiest war man has ever known? We had all asked that question to ourselves at night, and perhaps during confession with Father Koblenza, S.J., and it was apparent that we’d all had the same answer, revealed by our well-formed consciences: Tough shit, Tomasso.
Continued…
