War-time Silhouettes

A bleak December afternoon finds a gaunt, elderly merchant alone in a cold, over‑decorated drawing‑room, nursing grievances that stretch back to the war’s ruin of his fortune. Mr. Reiss, a man whose life is reduced to a calculus of money and respectability, spends his days lecturing the empty walls with bitter aphorisms about “humbug” and “bunkum,” while his shabby health and relentless indigestion paint a portrait of a man out of sync with the world he once dominated.

The quiet is broken when a nervous young soldier in khaki, his nephew, arrives with a hurried request for a loan to re‑enlist after heavy casualties have thinned his unit. Their terse conversation, punctuated by Reiss’s habit of demanding repetitions, reveals a clash between the old man’s cynical, profit‑driven worldview and the desperate, patriotic urgency of a generation forced back into combat. The encounter sets the stage for a tense exploration of loyalty, survival, and the lingering shadows of a war that continues to shape lives.