Wars I Have Seen by Gertrude Stein Read Free Book Online

enemies were enemies were like that.
    Enemies being like that make enemies tremble. They made so much noise they said to them you are vanquished and they knew the enemies were there, but that was not what being vanquished was, being vanquished was a sadness and a sorrow and a weakness and a woe, but it was not a horror. The enemy there, here, that is a sorrow that they wished they could be spared but they were not. The enemies were there. They were all alone in the kitchen, they did not sleep there, they just could not do that, they could not sleep with the enemy there, they found a little room outside to which they went to sleep, but all day and each day they were in the kitchen and the enemy were living there, not in the kitchen but in the house. It was awful, they can never forget.
    The day they won the enemy came in one by one to tell them so not only that they had won but that the others were done and that every one would be done one by one. Alas it was too true only two years after it was not so, that is to say if they had won the enemy had not finished everything it was only beginning and perhaps they were not winning.
    But the enemy had come in one by one on the day they had won to tell them and they had not stolen what was in the house because that would be stealing but they had broken open the trunks of the two women and taken everything because as they were only servants and were then in the kitchen taking everything away from them was not stealing and so they broke open the trunks and took everything. There was a woman who used to wash the clothes for the enemy in a kind of a way she was an enemy herself, not an enemy who could frighten one but just an enemy and she said the enemies would win because they had wonderful weapons that no one had ever seen, all the enemies had wonderful weapons that no one had ever seen. And now say Clothilde and Olympe andnow in 1943, perhaps it is true they the enemy feel the wonderful weapons that no one has ever seen, perhaps they do.
    And so it is true that they are all kinds of enemies, some that frighten some that steal and some that like a fiend make you come to heel. That is what Olympe has to say. To-day it is a fiend that is a mistress who says come and she has to go who makes her so unhappy that she has to cry.
    It is funny and when you are fifteen you begin to know that enemies are not what they seem, and then by twenty-four you know enemies are enemies and in between well and then later and now it is not certain that enemies are what they seem.
    At fifteen man and animals fruit trees and flowers beginning not to be things to pick but to feel. In the year ’43, milk was more and more difficult to have. There was no milk not even skimmed milk and so everybody who could had a goat. We had a goat. When I was fifteen I did not care for goats I like a wall and I had read about fruit trees growing on the sunny side of a wall and I always said when I was fifteen that when I was older and could have it I would have a wall and have fruit trees growing on the sunny side of a wall. I remember the first time I ever saw fruit trees arranged to grow on a wall. It was just after the Spanish American war and we were in Paris for the exposition and McKinley had just been shot and I saw fruit trees trained to grow on the sunny side of walls and it reminded me of when I was fifteen and I wanted to grow fruit trees on sunny sides of the wall and my brother said that he would keep a goat on the wall to eat the fruit trees. And now it is 1943 and there is no milk and we keep a goat and I walk the goat and I like the goat, goats are very willful and I have found out why we like flowers. Because goats pick flowers to eat, and children pick flowers because animals pick flowers to eat and children pick flowers like that.
    At fifteen flowers commence to have other meanings, beauty is beauty and flowers are flowers and flowers are no longer flowers as the goat picks them.
    Beauty is its own excuse