by Emile Zola
It was already four in the afternoon, and they had still had nothing to eat on this lovely sunny Thursday, when to their great joy they suddenly caught sight of Delaherche. A few of the better-off people in Sedan were managing with much trouble to get an authorization to go and see prisoners and take food to them, and more than once already Maurice had expressed his surprise at having no news of his sister. As soon as they recognized Delaherche a long way off, carrying a basket and with a loaf of bread under each arm, they made a rush, but even then they reached him too late, for there had been such an immediate pushing and shoving that the basket and one of the loaves had stayed in the scrum, been wafted away, done the vanishing trick. And Delaherche hadn’t even noticed.
‘Oh my poor friends,’ he stammered, dumbfounded, deflated, having come with a smile on his lips and the jolly man-to-man tone he adopted in his desire for popularity.
Jean had seized the last loaf and was defending it, and while Maurice and he sat at the roadside and devoured it in great mouthfuls Delaherche told them the news. His wife, thank God, was very well. He was a bit worried about the colonel, who had fallen into a state of great exhaustion, although Madame Delaherche sat with him from morning till night.
‘What about my sister?’ asked Maurice.
‘Oh yes, of course, your sister… She came with me and she carried the two loaves. But she had to stay there on the other side of the canal. The guards would never agree to let her pass… You know the Prussians have absolutely prohibited women from coming into the peninsula.’
Then he told them about Henriette and her vain efforts to see her brother and help him. By chance she had come face to face with cousin Gunther in Sedan – he was a captain in the Prussian Guard. He was going past with his stiff, hard look, pretending not to see her. And she herself, feeling sick as though he were one of her husband’s murderers, had at first quickened her step. But then, in a sudden reversal of mood that she did not understand herself, she had gone back and told him everything about Weiss’s death in a harsh, reproachful voice. On hearing about this horrible death of a relation of his he had simply made a gesture: it was the fortune of war and he might just as well have been killed himself. Hardly any change of expression had shown on his soldier’s face. Then, when she had mentioned her brother, now a prisoner, and begged him to use his influence so that she could see him, he had refused to take any step. Orders were explicit, and he spoke of the will of Germany as of a religion. On leaving him she had had the distinct impression that he thought he was in France as a righteous judge, with the intolerance and arrogance of the hereditary enemy brought up in hatred of the race he was chastising.
‘Anyway,’ Delaherche concluded, ‘you will have had something to eat tonight, and I am very sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t get another permit.’
He asked if they had any errands he could do, and kindly took pencilled letters that other soldiers entrusted to him, for Bavarians had been seen laughing as they lit their pipes with letters they had promised to send off.
As Maurice and Jean were walking with him to the bridge Delaherche exclaimed:
‘Look! There she is, Henriette!… You can see her waving her handkerchief.’
Beyond the line of sentries, in the crowd, they did make out a little, slim figure and a white point moving in the sun. They were both deeply moved and had tears in their eyes as they raised their arms and answered her with frantic waving.
The next day, Friday, was the most terrible of all for Maurice. And yet, after another quiet night in the little copse, he had had the good luck to eat some bread again, for Jean had discovered a woman in the Château de Villette who sold some at ten francs a pound. But that day they witnessed a gruesome scene which haunted them long afterwards like a nightmare.
On the previous day Chouteau had noticed that Pache had given up grumbling and looked dreamy and contented like a man who has eaten his fill. This at once suggested to him that the artful dodger must have a secret hoard somewhere, especially as that morning he had noticed that he went off for about an hour and then reappeared with a furtive smile and his mouth full. Surely he had had some stroke of luck and got hold of some food in one of the scrimmages. So Chouteau worked Loubet and Lapoulle up, especially the latter. Well, of all the filthy shits, to have something to eat and not share it out with his mates!
‘Tell you what, we’ll follow him tonight. We’ll see if he dares to stuff his guts all on his own when other poor sods are dying of hunger all round him.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re right, we’ll follow him,’ Lapoulle echoed furiously. ‘Then we shall see!’
His fists were clenched, and the mere hope of having something to eat at last was turning him into a madman. His huge appetite tormented him more than the others, and it was such a torture that he had tried to chew grass. Since the night before last, when the horsemeat and beetroot had given him such awful dysentery, he had had nothing at all, for his great body was so clumsy although it was so strong that he never got hold of anything in any scrum for food. He would have given his life-blood for a pound of bread.
As night was falling Pache slipped away among the trees of La Tour à Glaire and the three others stealthily followed.
‘He mustn’t suspect,’ whispered Chouteau. ‘Be careful in case he turns round.’
But some hundred paces further on Pache obviously thought he was alone, for he began walking fast without even bothering to look back. They had no trouble in following him as far as the quarries and were at his heels as he was moving two large stones and getting half a loaf out from underneath. It was the end of his provisions, still enough for one meal.
‘You fucking fraud!’ bawled Lapoulle. ‘So that’s why you hide! Give me that, it’s my share.’
Give up his bread, why should he? Little shrimp he might be, but anger stiffened him up, and he hugged the bread to his bosom with all his strength. He was hungry too.
‘Piss off, do you hear! It’s mine!’
As Lapoulle raised his fist he took to his heels and ran down from the quarry to the open land towards Donchery. The three others gave chase at full speed, breathing hard. But he was leaving them behind, for he was lighter in build and so frightened and so determined to keep what was his own that he seemed to be borne by the wind. He had covered nearly a kilometre and was nearing the little copse by the river when he ran into Jean and Maurice, who were coming back to their place for the night. As he went by he shouted for help, but they were so astonished by this man-hunt galloping past them that they remained rooted at the edge of a field. And so they saw it all.
As ill-luck would have it Pache tripped over a stone and went down. Already the three others had caught up, swearing, yelling and worked up by the chase, like a pack of wolves let loose on their prey.
‘Give us that, fuck you,’ shouted Lapoulle, ‘or I’ll do you in.’
He was raising his fist again when Chouteau handed him the knife, ready open, with which he had bled the horse.
‘Here you are, here’s the knife!’
Jean rushed forward to stop a murder, and he lost his head, too, and talked of turning them all in, which brought on him a nasty sneer from Loubet, who called him a Prussian because there were no higher ranks any more, and the Prussians were the only ones who issued orders.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ roared Lapoulle, ‘are you going to give it me?’
In spite of the terror that had drained the colour from his face Pache held the bread to his chest tighter still, with the obstinacy of a hungry peasant who won’t give up anything that is his.
‘No!’
Then it was all over, the brute thrust the knife into his throat so violently that the poor devil did not even make a sound. His arms slackened, the bit of bread fell to the ground into the blood that had spurted out.
In the face of this stupid, insane murder Maurice, who had not moved until then, seemed to go suddenly out of his mind as well. He threatened the three men with his fists and called them murderers wi
th such vehemence that his whole body was shaking. But Lapoulle did not seem even to hear. He stayed on the ground, crouching by the body, devouring the bread, red splashes of blood and all, with a wild, brutish look as though besotted by the noise of his own jaws, while Chouteau and Loubet, seeing how terrible he was as he appeased his hunger, did not even dare to ask for their shares.
The real night had come, but it was a bright night with a beautiful starlit sky, and Maurice and Jean, who had come back to their copse, could now only see Lapoulle prowling to and fro along the Meuse. The two others had gone, no doubt back to the canal towpath, worried about the body they had left behind. But Lapoulle seemed afraid to go back there and rejoin his mates. Clearly what with the shock of the murder and the heavy discomfort after bolting the big hunk of bread too fast, he was overcome with uneasiness, and that kept him on the move but he did not dare to go back along the path blocked by the corpse, hesitating, unable to make up his mind. Was it remorse awakening in his muddled soul, or merely fear of being discovered? So he roamed up and down like an animal behind the bars of its cage, with a sudden, growing urge to run away, an urge that hurt like a physical pain which he felt would kill him if he did not satisfy it. He must run, run at once and get away from this prison in which he had killed a man. But he threw himself down and for a long time he stayed there cowering in the grass on the river bank.
Maurice too was in a restless state and said to Jean:
‘Look, I can’t stand it here any longer. I tell you I shall go mad… I’m surprised how my body has stood up to it. I feel pretty fit, but my mind is going, yes it is, I’m sure. If you keep me one more day in this hell I’m done for… Please, I beg of you, let’s get out, and at once!’
He began to develop extravagant plans for escape. They would swim across the Meuse, throw themselves upon the sentries and strangle them with a bit of string he had in his pocket, or again knock them out with bits of rock, or again buy them over with money, put on their uniforms and go through the Prussian lines.
‘Stop it, chum,’ said Jean, very worried. ‘It frightens me when you talk such rubbish. Is any of that sensible, is it possible? We’ll see tomorrow, chuck it.’
Although he too felt sick with anger and disgust, he hung on to his good sense even though weakened by hunger and in the midst of the nightmares of this existence that was reaching the rock-bottom of human suffering. And as his friend got more hysterical and wanted to dive into the Meuse, he had to hold him back and even rough-handle him, though his eyes were full of tears as he pleaded and scolded. But then suddenly:
‘Oh, look!’
They had heard a splash, and then they saw Lapoulle, who had made up his mind to drop into the river, having thrown off his cape so as to be freer in his movements, and his shirt was clearly visible as a light patch moving on the dark current. He began to swim and slowly went upstream, no doubt looking for a suitable place to land, but on the opposite bank the slender outlines of the motionless sentries could clearly be seen. A sudden flash tore through the darkness and the sound of a shot echoed as far as the rocks of Montimont. The water merely swirled as though a pair of oars were badly churning it up. That was all, and Lapoulle’s body, the white patch, was left to float gently downstream.
The next day, Saturday, at dawn, Jean took Maurice back to the camp of the 106th with the fresh hope that they would leave that day. But there were no orders, and it looked as though their regiment had been forgotten. Many had gone and the peninsula was emptying, and those left behind were falling into black depression. For eight long days minds had been getting more and more unhinged in this hell. The rain had stopped, but the pitiless glaring sun had only changed the kind of torture. The heat wave put the finishing touch to the men’s exhaustion and bade fair to turn the cases of dysentery into an alarming epidemic. The dung and urine of all this army of sick men filled the air with the vilest stenches. It was now impossible to walk along the Meuse or the canal, so overpowering was the stink of drowned horses and men rotting among the reeds. In the fields the horses that had died of starvation were now decomposing, and the pestilential smell was so violent that the Prussians, who were beginning to be afraid for themselves as well, had brought some picks and shovels and were forcing the prisoners to bury the bodies.
And yet that Saturday saw the end of the famine. As they were fewer and provisions were coming in from all directions, they went abruptly from extreme deprivation to the most generous abundance. They had as much bread, meat and even wine as they wanted, and ate from morn till night enough to kill themselves. Night came and they were still eating, and went on until the next morning. Many died of it.
All day long Jean had been wholly taken up with watching Maurice who, he felt, was capable of any folly. He had been drinking and was talking of clouting a German officer so as to be taken away. And in the evening, having discovered a free corner in a cellar in the outbuildings of La Tour à Glaire, Jean thought it might be wise to go and sleep there with his friend who might be calmed down by a good night’s rest. But it was the most terrible night of their stay, a night of sheer horror during which they never closed their eyes. The cellar was full of other soldiers, and two of them were lying in the same corner as them, dying of dysentery which had drained their bodies. As soon as it was quite dark they kept up a continuous inarticulate moaning, with disjointed cries that became a death-struggle of increasing intensity. In the pitch darkness this death-rattle was so horrible that the other men lying near-by who wanted to get to sleep lost their tempers and shouted to the dying men to shut up. They did not hear, and the death-rattle went on, swelled up and drowned everything else, while from the outside came the drunken bawlings of comrades who were still gorging, still not getting enough.
Then a time of distress set in for Maurice. He had tried to get away from this dreadful painful moaning which brought him out into a cold sweat of anguish, but as he was feeling his way on to his feet he had trodden on somebody’s limbs and fallen down again, hemmed in with these dying men. After that he did not even try to escape. The whole awful disaster came back to him from the time of leaving Rheims to the crushing blow at Sedan. It seemed to him that the agony of the army of Châlons was only now coming to its end in the inky blackness of that cellar where two soldiers were gasping out their lives and preventing their mates from sleeping. The army of despair, the herd of sacrificial victims sent as a burnt offering, had paid for the sins of all with the red streams of its blood at each of the stations of its Via Crucis. And now, slain without glory, spat upon, it was going down to martyrdom under this chastisement whose harshness it had not deserved. It was too much, and it filled him with wrath and made him hunger for justice, with a burning passion to be revenged on destiny.
When dawn came one of the soldiers was dead and the other still gasping.
‘Come on, boy, let’s clear out of here,’ said Jean gently. ‘We’ll get some fresh air, it’ll be better.’
But when they got outside, on this beautiful and already warm morning, and had gone along the river until they were near the village of Iges, Maurice became even more worked up, and shook his fist at the great sunny horizon of the battlefield, the Illy plateau straight opposite, Saint-Menges to the left and the Garenne wood to the right.
‘No, no, I can’t, I simply can’t look at that any more. It’s having that in front of me that turns me over inside and splits my head open. Take me away! Take me away, now!’
It was another Sunday, and peals of bells came from Sedan, and already a German band could be heard in the distance. But still there were no orders for the 106th and Jean, alarmed at Maurice’s increasingly hysterical condition, made up his mind to try a trick he had been meditating since the day before. In the road, in front of the Prussian post, a party was being assembled for leaving, that of another regiment, the 5th infantry. There was considerable confusion in the ranks, and an officer whose French was not much good was having trouble with checking. So both of them, having first pulled the collar
band and buttons off their tunics so as not to be given away by the number, slipped into the middle of the crowd, crossed the bridge and found themselves outside. Evidently the same idea had occurred to Chouteau and Loubet, for they saw them behind, with their furtive, murderers’ eyes.
Oh what a relief that first happy minute was! In the outer world it seemed like a resurrection, with dancing light, unlimited air, all their hopes flowering anew. Whatever troubles they might have to face now, their fears had gone and they even laughed at them as they made their way out of the nightmare of the Camp of Hell.
3
THAT morning Jean and Maurice heard the gay sound of French bugles for the last time, and now they were marching along the road to Germany in the herd of prisoners, preceded and followed by detachments of Prussian soldiers while others guarded them on either side with fixed bayonets. Now all they heard at each post was German trumpets with their brassy, dreary sound.
Maurice was glad to see that the column was turning left and going through Sedan. Perhaps he would be lucky enough to catch one more glimpse of his sister Henriette. But the five kilometres between the Iges peninsula and the town were enough to take the edge off his joy at feeling himself out of the sink of filth in which he had suffered nine days of torment. But this pathetic convoy of prisoners was a new kind of torture, with these weaponless men dangling their useless hands, being driven like sheep with hurried and frightened steps. Dressed in rags, filthy from having been left in their own excrement, emaciated after fasting for over a week, they looked like nothing but a lot of vagrants and suspicious characters that the police had roped in from the streets. From Torcy onwards, as men stood still and women came to the doors to stare at them with sullen sympathy, Maurice was overcome with shame and looked down at the ground, a bitter taste in his mouth.
Jean, more down-to-earth and more thick-skinned, was only concerned with their silliness in not having brought away a loaf each. In the sudden scurry of their departure they had even left without eating anything, and now once again hunger was tiring them out. Other prisoners must have been in the same state, for many were holding out money and begging to be sold something. One very tall man in particular, who looked terribly ill, was waving a gold coin with his long arm over the heads of the escorting soldiers, and despairing of finding anything to buy. Then it was that Jean, who was certainly on the look-out, spotted in the distance a pile of a dozen loaves in front of a baker’s shop. Quickly, before the others, he threw down five francs and tried to pick up two of the loaves. Then as the Prussian near him brutally shoved him back, he insisted on trying at any rate to recover his money. But already the captain in charge of the column was running up. He was a bald-headed little man with an arrogant face, and he threatened Jean with the butt of his revolver and swore he would crack open the skull of the first man who dared to move. They all lowered their heads and looked down, and the march continued with the thud of feet and the resentful submissiveness of a herd of animals.
