A woman running, holding her child; a man with his fist raised in fury as he ran; another woman, also running, her face covered with both hands. The picture might have come from an illustrated Bible, but with military planes in the sky it couldn’t be a scene from ancient times. A woman sitting on the ground, both hands thrust into the air as she looked up at the sky. Another fallen, lying on her back. The stone picture book was now telling about the Nazi invasion.

Unlike the crudely sketched warplanes, the faces of these people on the run looked positively noble, the skilled carving showing the sculptor’s confidence. As if he were saying, “I studied Greek sculpture and Rodin, too.” Still, I didn’t feel like talking to these people. Their faces were much too well balanced. They didn’t look like the kind of people I’d want to make friends with. I simply can’t trust someone whose face isn’t a bit off-kilter because she’s shy or maybe too softhearted. These people were born in the country of stone, and they’d stay in stone forever. If their hearts were touched by a living human being, the stone would melt and the memorial’s message would lose its clarity. I started to feel sorry for them, all staring straight ahead that way, not allowed even a wrinkle or two around their noses. And since they all had the same build, there were no physical characteristics to mark them as individuals. Dressed like laborers, their muscles were so perfectly balanced that I couldn’t imagine what sort of specific work each one did.

Having wandered into the world of relief, half trapped in stone and half sticking out of it, I wanted to read a newspaper to find out what was going on, but here that would be impossible. There are no daily newspapers in the country of stone. Which meant there was no way to find out things like how many had died yesterday, or what sort of conference would be held tomorrow. So what should I do? Suddenly it occurred to me that I should try to help the injured, so I looked around for someone lying on the ground, needing first aid. But for a scene of carnage, everything was awfully orderly.

The stone people stopped their lamentations and, with furrowed brows, began to think about the meaning of war. Until now, the words they’d used most in their daily lives were the names of their children, or of flowers and other plants, or of the dogs they kept, or of carpentry tools or parts of the machines they used, but now, the name of their homeland was suddenly more important than any of these things. That was what they had to think of, and once it was firmly planted in their minds, they repeated it over and over again. They had nothing else to depend on. The bombs kept falling, destroying their houses. Their cows died, their workshops were flattened, their fields burned. Under this barrage, why couldn’t they find some raw, living words to toss back and forth? When a simple doubt, like, “Why must we kill each other when we all belong to the same human race?” could easily have been rolled into a ball to throw to their neighbors.