Read The General of the Dead Army for Free Online

and then I left. That’s all. No one has any idea the grave is there. That’s why I’ve come to see you. I want to beg you, when you go that way, to search for his remains.”
    “His name must certainly figure on the ‘Missing’ list,” the general said. “The lists are extremely accurate. But nevertheless you did well to come and see me, since the chances of finding missing bodies are always slight. Success in such cases is often simply a matter of luck.”
    “I have also made a little sketch, as well as I could,” the man said, pulling out of his pocket a scrap of paper on which he had scratched out something with a fountain pen that vaguely resembled a church, and then, just behind it, two arrows with the word grave written in red ink below them. “There’s a fountain not far away,” the man went on, “and further still, on the right, two cypresses about here,” and he made a fresh mark on the map, near the church. “Good,” the general said. “Thank you for your help.”
    “Oh, it is for me to thank you,” the other said. “He was my best friend.”
    There was something else he wanted to say, perhaps some further detail about the position of the grave, but the general’s stern and serious air prevented him from doing so. He took his leave without the general having even asked him his identity or his profession.
    And that had been just the start. Every afternoon he would hear the doorbell ring again and again as more and more visitors came pouring into the drawing-room. They were people of all sorts, from every walk of life - wives, aged parents, ex-soldiers - and they all had the same timid air, the same reserved expression on their faces. Then others began to filter in from the more distant towns and provinces. These newcomers waited in the drawing-room with an even more embarrassed air than the others and had great difficulty getting out what they wanted to say, especially since the information they were able to provide about their relations or their friends killed in Albania was usually both very limited and unreliable.
    The general made notes of everything that was said to him and then told them all the same thing:
    “Don’t worry. The lists drawn up by the War Ministry are extremely accurate, and with the detailed information they provide we cannot fail to find all those we are looking for. But I have in any case made a note of the information you have brought me. It may prove useful.”
    They thanked him, they left, and next day the whole thing began all over again. Another batch would appear, in dripping raincoats. It didn’t matter how carefully they picked their way across the thick carpet, they still left footprints on it. Some were afraid that their relations weren’t included on the lists, others brought telegrams received from commanding officers during the war bearing the date of death and the name of the place where the soldier had “fallen for his country,” still others - the old parents especially - unable to believe that their sons could be recovered solely with the help of the information provided by the lists, left in despair, having once more begged the general to spare no effort in his search.
    All had their little story to tell, and the general listened to them patiently, each in turn, from the wives who had now remarried and wanted to do their best for their first husbands without their new husbands knowing, to the young twenty-year-olds in sweaters and duffle coats who had never known the fathers who had died in the war.
    The last week before his departure, the number of visitors had increased even further. When he came back from his headquarters at mid-day the general would find his drawing-room crammed with people. The room had the air of a hospital corridor filled with patients waiting to be examined; but the silence here was even more complete. The visitors remained utterly silent for hours on end, sitting with their eyes fixed on the patterns in the carpet. Some,