They never let me out of their sight, nor out of their hands, carrying me with them everywhere like a burr. They were still children at heart. I could smell the fear pouring from their nostrils as they pressed against me. I could see the terror in eyes fixed on the barrel. I could feel their knees knocking together.
It was 1939, and I lay brand new on the dusty shelf of a depot.
All at once I heard a great commotion, people jostling, snatching us up one by one, slinging us over their strong shoulders.
The dust flew right off me.
A trembling hand lifted me up, and I could hear his heart beating. It was the first heart I had ever heard, and I had imagined it would tick along more sweetly, yet it was galloping.
Then he carried me out into the light, and I felt the cool of autumn, which made me wish I could linger a moment and take it in more fully, but he broke into a run. I swayed back and forth, this way and that, while he held me tight by the strap. We ran side by side, sensing that together we were about to change the world.
Suddenly he stopped, took a firm hold of me by the grip, set me before his right eye, stroked me gently, and waited for the order. He pressed down hard. Bullets flew everywhere. I wiped away his tears and said to him: "Strength, Comrade!" As if he understood me, he took the ammunition, loaded me, stroked me again, and waited for the order.
He pulled me forward and back, he screamed with all his lungs. He would turn his eyes to the sky, and I heard him pray to it. People are very strange, they pray to all sorts of things to save them when, in truth, all of us know that salvation lies in their hands alone.
And the others kept falling, falling by the thousands among trenches dug into the earth, barbed wire and rats.
Quiet settled in toward dusk. It began to rain. He sheltered beneath an old oak. He held me tight against his chest.
His heart took off racing again. Then he held me tighter still, as if he were thanking me. And he fell asleep for a long while.
I stayed there, watching the cherry trees turn white.