History of the Rain Read Online Free PDF

1,569, The Faber Book of Utopias , John Carey, Faber & Faber, London): ‘The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown . . . the dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold. The Gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees, when I saw them first through the gates, transported and ravished me . . . The men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And the young men glittering and sparkling angels; and maids, strange and seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street and playing were moving jewels.’
    Paradise has actual gates ?
    Thank you, Thomas. We’re back: Grandfather’s dead in a hole in the ground.
    It’s a bomb crater. The artillery boys have had fun blowing holes in France and some of the holes like this one are deep. He’s down there on his side, his mind doing last-minute preparations for the Afterlife, when the whole attack above retreats and the Germans take their turn to advance.
    It’s like Dancing in Jane Austen, Advance and Retreat, only with guns and mud. The German attack passes Grandfather’s Hole.
    But one German sees Grandfather move below and he jumps down. He does. He jumps down into the hole. And he whips out his bayonet.
    It’s in this thin little protective scabbard that keeps the blade clean. What Grandfather sees is a flash of light. He pulls out his pistol.
    Only his arm isn’t working so that doesn’t actually happen.
    He tries again, thinking pull out your pistol , but there’s only this torso-wriggle in the mud, and now the German is closing in on him. Grandfather’s looking at his arms telling them to wake up but he sees his whole chest is this tacky darkness and he realises the bayonet is the least of his worries.
    The German is standing over him, full sky behind his head, and knife in his hand.
    And then, flat German face perspiring, eyes intelligent and calm, he leans down to Grandfather and does the most remarkable thing; he taps Grandfather twice on the shoulder.
    ‘Tommy okay,’ he says. ‘Tommy okay.’
    Then he takes the bayonet and cuts a strip of cloth and with swift efficiency ties a tourniquet round Grandfather’s arm. He opens his pack of Whatever-To-Use-if-Shot that the Germans have given their soldiers and he splashes some on Grandfather’s chest wound.
    He looks at his handiwork a moment. Being German there are no loose bits. He nods. Grandfather sees the eyes he is to remember all his life.
    ‘Tommy okay,’ he says.
    Then the German soldier goes back to War.
    He climbs up the side of the crater, into Round Two of Advance Retreat, and is shot clean through the centre of his forehead.
     
    Next thing Grandfather knows he’s on a stretcher. He’s not in Paradise; there are no gold streets, no immortal wheat, not a single Cherub. Instead he’s in that bounce that I know too, when you’re tied into the stretcher and they carry you along and all you can see is the sky above moving backwards like you’re floating downriver and thinking how peculiar it is to be on your back moving through the world.
    On good days it can be a bit Michelangelo, like you’ve drunk Heaven-Up I told Timmy and he liked that and said you’re a poet like your dad. On good days before a treatment when the sky is that blue and deep and you’re being borne along you feel you never saw it before, you feel it’s not a roof but a door and it’s actually quite open if you just take the time. That’s my revelation anyhow. No angels though. I’ve never gone the whole Sistine.
    German-bandaged, Grandfather was carried back to British Lines. The red bloom soaked out from his chest like the Overdone Imagery Mrs Quinty says I use all the time.
    I don’t give a Figroll, I should have said.
    The thing is, it wasn’t what he was expecting. So the first phase is just this enormous surprise, this O that this is how the plot is twisting. Along he goes in the stretcher