At last the sun pierces the reek that spreads over us and soaks what it touches, and something like a fairy glade opens out in the midst of this gloom terrestrial. The regiment stretches itself and wakes up in truth, with slow-lifted faces to the gilded silver of earliest rays. Quickly, then, the sun grows fiery, and now it is too hot. In the ranks we pant and sweat, and our grumbling is louder even than just now, when our teeth were chattering and the fog wet-sponged our hands and faces.
It is a chalk country through which we are passing on this torrid forenoon—“They mend this road with lime, the dirty devils!” The road has become blinding—a long-drawn cloud of desiccated chalk and dust that rises high above our columns and powders us as we go. Faces turn red, and shine as though varnished; some of the full-blooded ones might be plastered with vaseline. Cheeks and foreheads are coated with a rusty paste which agglutinates and cracks. Feet lose their dubious likeness to feet and might have paddled in a mason’s mortar-trough. Haversacks and rifles are powdered in white, and our legion leaves to left and right a long milky track on the bordering grass. And to crown all—“To the right! A convoy!”
We bear to the right, hurriedly, and not without bumpings. The convoy of lorries, a long chain of four-square and huge projectiles, rolling up with diabolical din, hurls itself along the road. Curse it! One after another, they gather up the thick carpet of white powder that upholsters the ground and send it broadcast over our shoulders! Now we are garbed in a stuff of light grey and our faces are pallid masks, thickest on the eyebrows and moustaches, on beards, and the cracks of wrinkles. Though still ourselves, we look like strange old men.
“When we’re old buffers, we shall be as ugly as this,” says Tirette.
“Tu craches blanc,” declares Biquet.*
When a halt puts us out of action, you might take us for rows of plaster statues, with some dirty indications of humanity showing through.
We move again, silent and chagrined. Every step becomes hard to complete. Our faces assume congealed and fixed grimaces under the wan leprosy of dust. The unending effort contracts us and quite fills us with dismal weariness and disgust.
We espy at last the long-sought oasis. Beyond a hill, on a still higher one, some slated roofs peep from clusters of foliage as brightly green as a salad. The village is there, and our looks embrace it, but we are not there yet. For a long time it seems to recede as fast as the regiment crawls towards it.
At long last, on the stroke of noon, we reach the quarters that had begun to appear a pretence and a legend. In regular step and with rifles on shoulders, the regiment floods the street of Gauchin-l’Abbé right to its edges. Most of the villages of the Pas du Calais are composed of a single street, but such a street! It is often several kilometres long. In this one, the street divides in front of the Town Hall and forms two others, so that the hamlet becomes a big Y, brokenly bordered by low-built dwellings.
The cyclists, the officers, the orderlies, break away from the long moving mass. Then, as they come up, a few of the men at a time are swallowed up by the barns, the still available houses being reserved for officers and departments. Our half-company is led at first to the end of the village, and then—by some misunderstanding among the quartermasters—back to the other end, the one by which we entered. This oscillation takes up time, and the squad, dragged thus from north to south and from south to north, heavily fatigued and irritated by wasted walking, evinces feverish impatience. For it is supremely important to be installed and set free as early as possible if we are to carry out the plan we have cherished so long—to find a native with some little place to let, and a table where the squad can have its meals. We have talked a good deal about this idea and its delightful advantages. We have taken counsel, subscribed to a common fund, and decided that this time we will take the header into the additional outlay.
But will it be possible? Very many places are already snapped up. We are not the only ones to bring our dream of comfort here, and it will be a race for that table. Three companies are coming in after ours, but four were here before us, and there are the officious cooks of the hospital staff for the Section, of the clerks, the drivers, the orderlies and others, official cooks of the sergeants’ mess, and I don’t know how many more. All these men are more influential than the soldiers of the line, they have more mobility and more money, and can bring off their schemes beforehand. Already, while we march four abreast towards the barn assigned to the squad, we see some of these jokers across the conquered thresholds domestically busy.
Tirette imitates the sounds of lowing and bleating—“There’s our cattle-shed.” A fairly big barn. The chopped straw smells of closets, and our feet stir up clouds of dust. But it is almost enclosed. We choose our places and cast off our equipment.
Those who dreamed yet once again of a special sort of Paradise sing low—yet once again. “Look now, it seems as ugly as the other places,”—“It’s something like the same.”—“Naturally.”
But there is no time to waste in talking. The thing is to get clear and be after the others with all strength and speed. We hurry out. In spite of broken backs and aching feet, we set ourselves savagely to this last effort on which the comfort of a week depends.
The squad divides into two patrols and sets off at the double, one to left and one to right along the street, which is already obstructed by busy questing poilus; and all the groups see and watch each other—and hurry. In places there are collisions, jostlings, and abuse.
“Let’s begin down there at once, or our goose’ll be cooked!” I have an impression of a kind of fierce battle between all the soldiers, in the streets of the village they have just occupied. “For us,” says Marthereau, “war is always struggling and fighting—always, always.”
We knock at door after door, we show ourselves timidly, we offer ourselves like undesirable goods. A voice arises among us, “You haven’t a bit of a corner, madam, for some soldiers? We would pay.”
“No—you see, I’ve got officers—under-officers, that is—you see, it’s the mess for the band, and the secretaries, and the gentlemen of the ambulance——”
Vexation after vexation. We close again, one after the other, all the doors we had half-opened, and look at each other, on the wrong side of the threshold, with dwindling hope in our eyes.
“Good God! You’ll see that we shan’t find anything,” growls Barque. “Damn those chaps that got on the midden before us!”
The human flood reaches high-water mark everywhere. The three streets are all growing dark as each overflows into another. Some natives cross our path, old men or ill-shapen, contorted in their walk, stunted in the face; and even young people, too, over whom hovers the mystery of secret disorders or political connections. As for the petticoats, there are old women and many young ones—fat, with well-padded cheeks, and equal to geese in their whiteness.
Suddenly, in an alley between two houses, I have a fleeting vision of a woman who crossed the shadowy gap—Eudoxie! Eudoxie, the fairy woman whom Lamuse hunted like a satyr, away back in the country, that morning we brought back Volpatte wounded, and Fouillade, the woman I saw leaning from the spinney’s edge and bound to Farfadet in a mutual smile. It is she whom I just glimpsed like a gleam of sunshine in that alley. But the gleam was eclipsed by the tail of a wall, and the place thereof relapsed upon gloom. She here, already! Then she has followed our long and painful trek! She is attracted——?
And she looks like one allured, too. Brief glimpse though it was of her face and its crown of fair hair, plainly I saw that she was serious, thoughtful, absent-minded.
Lamuse, following close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell him. He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it evades him like a Will-o’-th’-wisp. For the moment, besides, we are on business bent. The coveted corner must be won. We resume the hunt with the energy of despair. Barque leads us on; he has taken the matter to heart. He is trembling—you can see it
in his dusty scalp. He guides us, nose to the wind. He suggests that we make an attempt on that yellow door over there. Forward!
Near the yellow door, we encounter a shape down-bent. Blaire, his foot on a milestone, is reducing the bulk of his boot with his knife, and plaster-like debris is falling fast. He might be engaged in sculpture.
“You never had your feet so white before,” jeers Barque.
“Rotting apart,” says Blaire, “you don’t know where it is, that special van?” He goes on to explain: “I’ve got to look up the dentist van, so they can grapple with my ivories, and strip off the old grinders that’s left. Yes, seems it’s stationed here, the chop-caravan.”
He folds up his knife, pockets it, and goes off alongside the wall, possessed by the thought of his jaw-bones’ new lease of life.
Once more we put up our beggars’ petition: “Good-day, madame; you haven’t got a little corner where we could feed? We would pay, of course, we would pay——”
“No.”
Through the glass of the low window we see lifted the face of an old man—like a fish in a bowl, it looks—a face curiously flat, and lined with parallel wrinkles, like a page of old manuscript.
“You’ve the little shed there.”
“There’s no room in the shed, and when the washing’s done there——”
Barque seizes the chance. “It’ll do very likely. May we see it?”
“We do the washing there,” mutters the woman, continuing to wield her broom.
“You know,” says Barque, with a smile and an engaging air, “we’re not like those disagreeable people who get drunk and make themselves a nuisance. May we have a look?”
The woman has let her broom rest. She is thin and inconspicuous. Her jacket hangs from her shoulders as from a valise. Her face is like cardboard, stiff and without expression. She looks at us and hesitates, then grudgingly leads the way into a very dark little place, made of beaten earth and piled with dirty linen.
“It’s splendid,” cries Lamuse, in all honesty.
“Isn’t she a darling, the little kiddie!” says Barque, as he pats the round cheek, like painted india-rubber, of a little girl who is staring at us with her dirty little nose uplifted in the gloom. “Is she yours, madame?”
“And that one, too?” risks Marthereau, as he espies an overripe infant on whose bladder-like cheeks are shining deposits of jam, for the ensnaring of the dust in the air. He offers a half-hearted caress in the direction of the moist and bedaubed countenance. The woman does not deign an answer.
So there we are, trifling and grinning, like beggars whose plea still hangs fire.
Lamuse whispers to me, in a torment of fear and cupidity, “Let’s hope she’ll catch on, the filthy old slut. It’s grand here, and, you know, everything else is pinched!”
“There’s no table,” the woman says at last.
“Don’t worry about the table,” Barque exclaims. “Look! There, put away in that corner, the old door; that would make us a table.”
“You’re not going to trail me about and upset all my work!” replies the cardboard woman suspiciously, and with obvious regret that she had not chased us away immediately.
“Don’t worry, I tell you. Look, I’ll show you. Hey, Lamuse, old cock, give me a hand.”
Under the displeased glances of the virago we place the old door on a couple of barrels.
“With a bit of a rub-down,” says I, “that will be perfect.”
“Why yes, mother, a flick with a brush’ll do us instead of tablecloth.”
The woman hardly knows what to say; she watches us spitefully: “There’s only two stools, and how many are there of you?”
“About a dozen.”
“A dozen. Oh, Jesus!”
“What does it matter? That’ll be all right, seeing there’s a plank here—and that’s a bench ready-made, eh, Lamuse?”
“Course,” says Lamuse.
“I want that plank,” says the woman. “Some soldiers that were here before you have tried already to take it away.”
“But us, we’re not thieves,” suggests Lamuse gently, so as not to irritate the creature that has our comfort at her disposal.
“I don’t say you are, but soldiers, you know, they smash everything up. Oh, the misery of this war!”
“Well then, how much’ll it be, to hire the table, and to heat up a thing or two on the stove?”
“It’ll be twenty sous a day,” announces the hostess with restraint, as though we were wringing that amount from her.
“It’s dear,” says Lamuse.
“It’s what the others gave me that were here, and they were very kind, too, those gentlemen, and it was worth my while to cook for them. I know it’s not difficult for soldiers. If you think it’s too much, it’s no job to find other customers for this room and this table and the stove, and who wouldn’t be in twelves. They’re coming along all the time, and they’d pay still more, if I wanted. A dozen!—”
Lamuse hastens to add, “I said ‘It’s dear,’ but still, it’ll do, eh, you others?” On this downright question we record our votes.
“We could do well with a drop to drink,” says Lamuse. “Do you sell wine?”
“No,” said the woman, but added, shaking with anger, “You see, the military authority forces them that’s got wine to sell it at fifteen sous! Fifteen sous! The misery of this cursed war! One loses at it, at fifteen sous, sir. So I don’t sell any wine. I’ve got plenty for ourselves. I don’t say but sometimes, and just to oblige, I don’t allow some to people that one knows, people that knows what things are, but of course, sir, not at fifteen sous.”
Lamuse is one of those people “that knows what things are.” He grabs at his water-bottle, which is hanging as usual on his hip. “Give me a litre of it. That’ll be what?”
“That’ll be twenty-two sous, same as it cost me. But you know it’s just to oblige you, because you’re soldiers.”
Barque, losing patience, mutters an aside. The woman throws him a surly glance, and makes as if to hand Lamuse’s bottle back to him. But Lamuse, launched upon the hope of drinking wine at last, so that his cheeks redden as if the draught already pervaded them with its grateful hue, hastens to intervene—
“Don’t be afraid—it’s between ourselves, mother, we won’t give you away.”
She raves on, rigid and bitter, against the limited price on wine; and, overcome by his lusty thirst, Lamuse extends the humiliation and surrender of conscience so far as to say, “No help for it, madame! It’s a military order, so it’s no use trying to understand it.”
She leads us into the store-room. Three fat barrels occupy it in impressive rotundity. “Is this your little private store?”
“She knows her way about, the old lady,” growls Barque.
The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: “Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I’ve about enough of losing money all ways at once.”
“How?” insists Barque.
“I can see you’re not going to risk your money!”
“That’s right—we only risk our skins.”
We intervene, disturbed by the tone of menace for our present concern that the conversation has assumed. But the door of the wine-cellar is shaken, and a man’s voice comes through. “Hey, Palmyra!” it calls.
The woman hobbles away, discreetly leaving the door open. “That’s all right—we’ve taken root!” Lamuse says.
“What dirty devils these people are!” murmurs Barque, who finds his reception hard to stomach.
“It’s shameful and sickening,” says Marthereau.
“One would think it was the first time you’d had any of it!”
“And you, old gabbler,” chides Barque, “that says prettily to the wine-robber, ‘Can’t be helped, it’s a military order’! Gad, old man, you’re not short of cheek!”
“What else could I do or say? We should have had to go into mourning for our table and our wine. She could make us pay forty sous for the wine, and w
e should have had it all the same, shouldn’t we? Very well, then, got to think ourselves jolly lucky. I’ll admit I’d no confidence, and I was afraid it was no go.”
“I know; it’s the same tale everywhere and always, but all the same——”
“Damn the thieving natives, yes, yes! Some of e’m must be making fortunes. Everybody can’t go and get killed.”
“Ah, the gallant people of the East!”
“Yes, and the gallant people of the North!”
“Who welcome us with open arms!”
“With open hands, yes——”
“I tell you,” Marthereau says again, “it’s a shame and it’s sickening.”
“Shut it up—there’s the she-beast coming back.”
We took a turn round to quarters to announce our success, and then went shopping. When we returned to our new dining-room, we were hustled by the preparations for lunch. Barque had been to the rations distribution, and had managed, thanks to personal relations with the cook (who was a conscientious objector to fractional divisions), to secure the potatoes and meat that formed the rations for all the fifteen men of the squad. He had bought some lard—a little lump for fourteen sous—and some one was frying. He had also acquired some green peas in tins, four tins. Mesnil André’s tin of veal in jelly would be a hors-d’œuvre.
“And not a dirty thing in all the lot!” said Lamuse, enchanted.
We inspected the kitchen. Barque was moving cheerfully about the iron Dutch oven whose hot and steaming bulk furnished all one side of the room.
“I’ve added a stewpan on the quiet for the soup,” he whispered to me. Lifting the lid of the stove—“Fire isn’t too hot. It’s half an hour since I chucked the meat in, and the water’s clean yet.”
A minute later we heard some one arguing with the hostess. This extra stove was the matter in dispute. There was no more room left for her on her stove. They had told her they would only need a casserole, and she had believed them. If she had known they were going to make trouble, she would not have let the room to them. Barque, the good fellow, replied jokingly, and succeeded in soothing the monster.
Under Fire Page 7
