David Ellison

He cannot return.

He's not capable of returning.

So he decides instead to flee north.

He grabs

his violin, which he will use as a kind of transcribing instrument, and imagines this kind of quasi-scholarly activity in which he will disappear into the north, fleeing from the tentacles of the army and very slowly restoring himself through his interest and through his love of music.

So they are Kelly, who is a brute, sadistic corporal who initially appears as a witness of these atrocities that occurred.

No, no, although the writing is on the wall, I think.

Okay.

And his fellow, Kelly is paired with Medina, a fellow soldier, a Spanish soldier in this case, and they are given the job of finding Lacroix and killing him.

And this is an agreement that has been arranged previously

by the English and the Spanish as a way of compensating them for this atrocity that occurred in the village of Morales.

It is a compelling cat and mouse story because you've got someone who's traumatized.

And as I mentioned before, that is a familiar tale.

So we know at some point the source of the trauma will be revealed.

And that source of the trauma is also, in this case, a crime that demands some kind of punishment.

and the punishment is to be delivered at the hands of these two soldiers, one of whom is, as I mentioned, a kind of sadistic brute, and the other is a much gentler fellow, searching, interested in the world.

Quite cosmopolitan in comparison.

And so they're a kind of...

an uncomfortable pairing in many respects.

The difficulty for me, and this was initially kind of stymied my best efforts to like the novel, is that I found that slightly unconvincing in that war crimes in the Peninsular War