from Section 6 -- Gird's Story

During the war, Gird is taken captive, not by an army but a private citizen, named Serno, who lives with his daughter, Srena, and son-in-law, Dirsh. Dirsh has long since been off fighting.

Before the war, Dirsh helps with hunting for food,. repairing the home. But this youth, like other town youths, becomes a soldier. By the time Gird is captured, imprisoned in the family's basement.

One day, Serno, preparing protection for coming cold weather, drives nails into wood placed over house and barn windows. Because his eyesight is feeble, he hammers one into the flesh between his right thumb and lower forefinger knuckle. He howls, wrings the damaged hand, falls off of his ladder, smacks into the ground. Later, heavily bandaged, clenching a cane, he hobbles into Gird's cell: "Soldier," he begins. Gird meets his eyes; Serno waves the cane near Gird's torso. "Soldier, you could get out of your cell, help us out with some chores. We'd give you, you know, cleaner food."

Gird, in a low mood, and disoriented, after the inactivity that accompanies imprisonment, swells with gratitude at this offer. The first weeks he doesn't work alone, but with recuperating Serno, following, watching, barking out orders. In evening, Gird returns to his cell: eats, bathes, sleeps. He's attended there by Srena: "Soldier," she calls outside of his cell, signaling a platter of food, or a basin of water. Within a few months, Serno no longer follows Gird's every move. He is healed enough to take on light work, and also trusts his prisoner. At this same time, Srena starts visiting Gird in the night.

"Soldier," he hears a voice whisper, jostling him out of deep sleep, opening his eyes up to Srena; night-dressed, medallion hanging from a leather strand draped around her neck. "Soldier," she repeats, letting herself into his cell, bringing his finger tips to her moist inner thighs. #34Soldier, soldier" she chants, stroking his cheekbones, his shoulders.

When she leaves, Gird dozes, replays Srena, is overcome at once with deep pleasure, and an unsettling tug. He replays Srena: smell, hair, skin‹something in her skin‹waist, shoulders, sides of the buttocks, soft and bumpy at once, an uneasy combination of textures.

Srena pads downstairs the next night, and the night after that; each union brings longer periods of controlled excitement.

Neither discuss her marks, until Dirsh returns home for his weekend pass. Gird stays in his basement-cell during this period, but the night Dirsh leaves, Srena pads downstairs, enters Gird's arms as if she's in some frenzied heat. Gird feels himself turn clammy: these lips covering his, are just fresh from covering that husband's. But this disgust is replaced by a more horrible one when he sees and feels the fresh bumps on her waist, shoulders, sides of the buttocks. Gird nails her with a stare; she wrinkles her forehead, says she must tell him some things about her husband.

"It isn't that he doesn't love me...he's very weak...nights with Dirsh are damaged; he is damage. But when he leaves I don't believe we were ever together. So I document; carve myself, with little marks."

That night, Srena rocks Gird into sleep. The next night she repeats her story, adding on, then the next adding on again. Soon she doesn't stop talking about the life she shared with Dirsh, reciting scenes in the same and in different orders, "It isn't that he doesn't love me," she always begins. And she stresses Dirsh's frailty: "Dirsh's home is the battlefield. Elsewhere he is thread. You and I are constructed of much more solid material." Loathing, whose degree and intensity are unfamiliar, bubbles up in Gird's stomach. Several months after Dirsh leaves, Srena is visibly with child; everyone, including her father Serno, thinks she made this child together with her solid, soldier husband, home for that weekend, before speeding back to war. Srena and Gird know that the child cannot belong to Dirsh, who doesn't perform reproductive penetration.

The new life becomes the hub of Srena's attention, shifting it off of her husband; the embraces with Gird again return to periods that are long, extended; Gird strokes Srena's belly, she imagines their child; Gird details plans to track Dirsh down, and to destroy him. He plans how he will tell this to Srena, whose compassion for that husband is fixed. He plans how he someday will tell her. He never tells her. Srena dies in childbirth. Dirsh disappears in battle. For nearly a year, Serno and Gird live together, care for the baby boy Serno names, in honor of who he thinks is his dead father, Dirsh. The war subsides, Serno dies with a last request: Gird must take the baby, head home to Munn with him, care for him. Which Gird does, after renaming his son Kip.