Year's Best SF 17 полностью

My name is Brian Garlick and I carry an easel into battle.

Well, in reality I carry a sketch book and several cameras, but I like to give people a picture of me they can understand.

The sergeant doesn’t understand me, though. He’s been staring since we boarded the flier in Marseilles. Amongst the nervous conversation of the troops, their high-pitched laughter like spumes of spray on a restless sea, he is a half-submerged rock. He’s focussing on me with dark eyes and staring, staring, staring. As the voices fade to leave no sound but the whistle of the wind and the creak of the pink high-visibility straps binding the equipment bundles, he’s still staring, and I know he’s going to undermine me. I’ve seen that look before, though less often than you might expect. Most soldiers are interested in what I do, but there are always those who seem to take my presence as an insult to their profession. Here it comes …

“I don’t get it,” he says. “Why do we need a war artist?”

The other soldiers are watching. Eyes wide, their breath fast and shallow, but they’ve just found something to distract them from the coming fight. Well, I have my audience; it’s time to make my pitch to try and get them on my side for the duration of the coming action.

“That’s a good question,” I reply. I smile, and I start to paint a picture. A picture of the experienced old hand, the unruffled professional.

“Someone once said a good artist paints what can’t be painted. Well, that’s what a war artist is supposed to do.”

“You paint what can’t be painted,” says the Sergeant. It’s to his credit he doesn’t make the obvious joke. For the moment he’s intrigued, and I take advantage of the fact.

“They said Breughel could paint the thunder,” I say. “You can paint lightning, sure, but can you make the viewer hear the thunder? Can you make them feel that rumble, deep in their stomach? That’s the job of a war artist, to paint what can’t be painted. You can photograph the battle, you can show the blood and the explosions, but does that picture tell the full story? I try to capture the excitement, the fear, the terror.” I look around the rows of pinched faces, eyes shiny. “I try to show the heroism.”

I’ve composed my picture now, I surreptitiously snap it. That veneer of pride that overlays the hollow fear filling the flier as it travels through the skies.

The sergeant sneers, the mood evaporates.

“What do you know about all that?”

I see the bitter smiles of the other soldiers. So I paint another picture. I lean forward and speak in a low voice.