THE SCREAM FOR POPPY (1917)
Femke Paardenkooper
He was still young, naïve maybe, but not unintelligent. Before he was drafted, he had actually been a history student. He was obsessed; hours and hours he spent reading and learning the stories of the past. The one story that had touched him the most, inspired him the most, was the story of Achilles.
Ahhh… Achilles. Yes, Achilles… Do you remember him? The half-god and prince of Phthia, always touched by golden sunlight. In every room he entered, he lit it up with his presence, proving his strength and beauty to be contagious. Being near Achilles made a mortal feel unbeatable, almost godlike.
But then came the letter, and the precious history student had to trade his loving books for a gun and a bag with a red cross on it. In a way, the boy saw himself as Achilles, because his job as a medic on the frontline was to make everybody feel unconquerable and courageous. When the attacks had stopped, he’d make jokes to make the other boys laugh. And when the attacks began, he’d use the magical syringe. Poppy they called it. It was morphine, derived from the poppy plant, he was told. After his training, he was sent to foreign lands with ugly, muddy trenches. And one morning, in those trenches, when the attacks started, he heard them scream for it the first time. As fast as he could, he ran towards the high-pitched scream that could be heard from a thousand cities away. A scream that entered through the ears, slid down the spine, and forever lodged itself in the brain.
The first boy who desperately screamed for it had been shot in his shoulder, which deprived him of ever moving his arm again. They called him lucky for that. ‘Lucky,’ the other boy thought, ‘how’s that lucky?’ But still, he tried to do his job and stop the bleeding and the pain, so he pierced him with the syringe. Immediately, he saw the bleeding boy release his thorough bodily tension and soften to the point where he caved in, lifted his face to the greyish sky, and smiled. He wasn’t gone, but he wasn’t here anymore. He was somewhere else. Perhaps the bleeding boy was envisioning the holy land of Troy, captivated by its imagery and glory. Perhaps he was thinking of a girl, his own Briseis? Maybe he had picked her up and led her to the golden beaches of Troy. Here, they would linger around pointlessly but lovingly and warmly. Perhaps he had already met the great Achilles there. And the boy smiled now too, content with what the magic potion of the poppy had done for the bleeding boy. ‘It must feel nice,’ the boy said to the others.
But peace never lasted long in the trenches. The smile faded as quickly as it had come, stolen again by the thunder of war. There was no time to linger at Troy, no time for golden beaches or warm embraces. The boys still needed him, and the cries would always return. He focused on his comrades, trying to reassure them and give them courage, just as Achilles would. His job continued relentlessly. Once the attacks began, he moved like a deer, alert to the smallest sound. He would focus on the sounds, not the great, destructive sounds of the bombing or the guns, but the hidden sounds of a boy in desperation and excruciating pain. He didn’t move, or smell, or feel, so his body could put all its energy towards the one sense he needed right there and then. That was how he went through life for weeks on end: stopping the pain, stopping the bleeding, getting them to safety, again and again. Seeing broken arms, missing limbs, splashed eyes, and unrecognisable faces, all screaming the same word.
Two months later, when he heard a boy scream for it again, he would run with his golden armour towards the sound: athletic, fast, and glorious like a fine prince and worthy son of Thetis. But when the boy finally arrived at the place in the trenches where the sound came from, it was already too late. There he found it: four boys blown into pieces. Limbs everywhere, mud everywhere, blood everywhere. He could see three hadn’t survived the impact of the bombing, but one of them had lived long enough to call him over. The last minutes of this boy's life were filled with extreme pain and immense suffering. He must have seen his mates lying dead next to him, all of them unrecognisable and hideous. He must have seen his own legs missing, no longer attached to the rest of his body. The boy kneeled beside him and wiped the blood from his hands, but it never came off. In those moments, the boy would feel the syringes burning from his kit, waiting for him to give in. The cries would always return, sharper, closer, dragging him from one broken body to the next.
The boy never got used to the screaming. Every time he heard it, he startled and tensed his whole body, and it took him more and more seconds each time to leave his place and drag himself, in his imagined golden armour, towards the horrific, nauseating scene that was forced upon them. He heard them scream for it: ‘Poppyy! Poppyyy!’ He had heard them cry for it, too.
Sometimes, when the fighting had stopped, he would hear softer sounds, trembling sounds. And when he followed them, he would find them crying for his magical potion. He remembered one boy specifically. His sorrowful tears were unstoppable. There weren’t enough resources in the world to stop those wet tears. The boy considered him his Patroclus from then on, and he hugged him, tried to make him feel better with his camaraderie. The boy desperately trying to copy Achilles’ love for Patroclus. But there was no stopping this boy’s tears. And so, he blessed his Patroclus with the magic syringe, which assured his arrival in the glorious battle of Troy for a moment, far, far away from those ugly, muddy trenches. In this escape to Troy, the boy would conquer and drink and feast. But dreams never lasted long in the trenches. When the poppy’s warmth faded, the mud and the darkness returned, and Patroclus’s tears returned with it. The boy began to fear that even the escape to Troy could not save his new comrade for long.
A couple of days later, the boy couldn’t find his Patroclus, so he searched for him. He scoured the trenches for two hours before he finally found him, crumpled in a corner against the wall of the hole he had dug himself. When he put his hand on Patroclus’s shoulder, he fell. Patroclus had shot himself. It was his attempt to release himself from the ugly gloom that surrounded them. But the horrors of the trenches and the dark days were so extreme, they had probably followed him to the next life. Not a thousand years, not a million years would suffice to shake off the bodily horrors they had experienced.
Can you imagine? No mortal solution, nothing in the universe to help them. Only the magic poppy was there.
And thus, this became the first, but not the last time, that the boy in the imagined shiny armour yielded to the power of the poppy too. When the days grew so dark that they overshadowed the golden reflections of Achilles’ presence, he would use it. And in the month after Patroclus’s death, it happened more and more often.
One night, when the darkness suffocated everything bright, when the boy had seen too many mutilated, lifeless, inglorious bodies, he used it again. And again, and again, and again. And so he pierced himself once more, surrendering to the sweet, magical poison. The war fell silent for a moment, and his body began to listen only to the poppy’s whispers. It starts when the agony is overtaken by a small but not insignificant stinging in the palm of his hand, whereafter the stinging increases exponentially. As if a thousand ants arise from the centre of his hand and crawl towards the rest of his body. But the delicate ants are sweet to him. They spread happiness from his hand to the rest of his body, bringing warmth and pleasure. And when the ants reach his head, they make space for him to resonate with the memory of his beloved, famed Troy. And now this land seems even more breathtaking than ever before. The indescribable contentment he didn’t know he was capable of anymore reaches his mortal spirit, and so he lies back and stares at the darkened grey sky. When the deep vibrations lingered from his shoulder to his hand, the warmth almost boiling, the sky brightened. ‘Achilles.’ The boy’s lips trembled as he cried Achilles’ name, ‘Achilles….’ His hand reached out, and there he was, hand to hand, staring at the godly figure that had come for him.
But the boy sank, and sank, and sank deeper into the ocean of the thrilling sounds and internal vibrations the magic poppy had blessed him with. And near the bottom of this ocean, he found a state of oblivion that made him untouchable, unreachable for the ugly and inhumane terrors the war had forced upon him. He was now touched by the half-gods, divine and glorious. His body shimmered with gold, his hair lit by the golden sun, like a crown on his head. And the golden sun shed its light upon his pretty armour. In that moment, he had won his war of Troy. He found the promised fame and glory in this Troy. The effects of the poppy surged through him, now at their height. The unimaginable amount of ecstasy trapped inside him hurt his chest, eager to be released. But even in the golden rapture, he felt the shadow at the edge of his mind. Every light, every warmth, knew its end. Just as Achilles had fallen, so too would he. The arrow waited, silent, inevitable, and he surrendered, letting the fate of his hero become his own. And when the arrow hit him, it hit him everywhere: in his heel, in his chest, in his shoulders, in his neck. He sank once more, deeper into this ocean of death. The boy, becoming one with Achilles at last, melded into him, their separate shapes dissolving. He was now Achilles.
Achilles laid down his body, accepting what fate had brought him. He became utterly unaware of his surroundings, carried beyond the reach of greyness, beyond the clutch of pain, beyond the stain of blood. No battle could follow him, no cruelty could harm him, no other fate could claim him. And finally, peace came over him as he reached the gates of his beloved Phthia after the glorious battle of Troy. Once more, he got to look at it, once more, he could see it, smell it, and feel it. He was golden, untouchable, finally free… like magic.
Femke Paardenkooper is a literary student from Utrecht University, currently studying at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her research explores how reading Young Adult Literature shapes meaning in life, blending theory and criticism. Passionate about Virginia Woolf, inter/afterwar psychology, journaling, short fiction, and the intersections of art and philosophy.
